Really Unhappy with Tooway

Beware! If only I knew then what I now know.I Installed less than one week ago in East Sussex with Avonline Tooway XL package and within 24hours was throttled back to 0.2Mbs (Yes you read that right) during evening hours (when its needed). Can�t load pages let alone stream a video. Incidentally this is a ¼ of the bandwidth I got from my old ADSL line. Technical support tried to upgrade me to an even more expensive package citing Fair Usage Policy

Given this is never going to work gave them a ring within the 7 day cooling off period and this is copy of the email sent back:
�Thank you for taking the time to contact Avonline.
Further to our conversation, if you would like to cancel your connection within the first 7 days the following charges will apply.
Installation £124.95 (Already paid)
De-Installation £124.95
Activation £29.95
De-Activation £29.95
1st Months Service £44.95 (Already paid)�

So there you have it, Modern day highwaymen at work. Broadband that is advertised as �fast and reliable� is expensive with a fair use policy which won�t work for an average family of 4 on the next to top package.
Advice to those brighter than me reading this forum before they buy- DON�T GO NEAR these jokers.

There are a number of users on these forums having problems with satelite at the moment - too many users for too little capacity.

As far as the "7 day" cooling off period do they state that they have this? Some types of services are exempt from that rule - I suspect because of the costs of installations that satelite may well be one of those exempt services.

Bad news but you may find that there is little you can do to get anything back from them.

EDIT: Just looked at their Ts&Cs for cooling off period. It states that you remain liable for all costs incurred by the for installation and return of equipment plus all service up to the disconnection. So, you might be able to get money back from the first month rental but other than that according to their Ts&Cs you are liable. How that stands up in law courts if you sued though would be a different question.

Edited by ian72 (Tue 10-Sep-13 16:39:59)

How much data did you transfer before 'throttling' was applied? If it was a small fraction of the allowance you paid for then while you might be contract bound to pay the fees (I would seek advice on that side) you could dispute that the service was not what you were sold in the first place, thus should not need to pay the fees at all.

Chris,
As a response to your posting, as MD of Avonline Broadband, I wanted to clarify some of the points that you made and add some other facts both for your reference and other readers of your post.

Satellite broadband, whether Tooway or any other consumer service, is always a "data" based service ie. you commonly choose what data levels are suitable for your requirements. In addition, satellite services are always subject to a Fair Access policy which means that a few heavy users cannot adversely impact the service for all other users. Both our Fair Access Policy and our T&C's are available on every web page on our website.

What you did not state in your posting is that within two days of your system being installed on a Tooway XL service with 30GB of data per month, you had used almost 50% of your total monthly data (14GB) and had triggered into a Heavy User under the Fair Access Policy. This means during peak times, as a Heavy User, you will see speeds restricted to allow average users a fair chance to use the system resources. As you confirmed to our call centre, out of Fair Access Policy restrictions, the system continues to perform as advertised giving you an 19.6Mbps download speed.

In addition, due the the nature of latency with satellite services, in order to measure download speeds accurately you cannot use many common speed test services. We provide a specific satellite based test but something like the BBC iPlayer speed test also performs accurately. Whilst I know that your speeds will have been reduced due the the heavy usage, I know that you did not use the provided speed test option which is unused on your account so any stated speeds that you quote are likely to be additionally reduced.

Despite peak time restrictions, you have since used a further 7GB since the weekend taking you to 21GB - 70% of your month's allowance in about a week. At around 3GB per day, the system obviously works ! That is the reason why the team suggested managing video and streaming downloads more carefully, using the unlimited night-time usage allowance that you had or alternatively if you needed more data, upgrading.

I'm sorry that you weren't able to give the service more time as we do often find that customers can initially use extremes of data due to the novelty of having a broadband service that is capable of streaming/downloading at up to 20Mbps. We have worked with hundreds of customers to get through this initial phase and who settle into usage habits that fit their package and their budget.

If you want to email me directly or if I can try and help you to achieve this, please feel free to contact me at [email protected].

Mark

It's nice to have all the facts. Thank you for your clarification post.

So does our speed test fit your criteria of working on a satellite connection.

If not it would be interesting to here what the problems are.

It may be worth adding Fap applies as a * to the bigger unlimited data headlines so people don't miss the footnotes.

I suspect the differentiating factor with speed tests (and real life usage) is whether the traffic is TCP or UDP based? The latency will affect the acknowledge mechanism of TCP significantly.

Hence the common use of mulitiple threads these days

Andrew - thanks for the comments. We are already working to link the FAP more visually with package choices etc through the site. With the majority of sales taken by telephone, FAP is something that is commonly discussed with customers during the ordering process. The FAP is also accessible on every webpage already though.

On tests, I've asked Eutelsat to provide a technical response to the most common speed tests vs Speedprobe which I will share as soon as I have it. Mark

The speed test issue is actually very simple

Do you guys think our test does not work on a satellite based connection?
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html

It is perfectly understandable for customers to be wary of tests within the control of the provider, hence blanket statements about other speed tests not working are not good and we have seen tests that suggest no big problems apart from at times of congestion which is to be expected, as tests move data around the Internet. Any test that just moves data over a limited network segment should have this made clear to the tester, particularly if selling an Internet service, rather than a point to point link.