Beware Imagine WiMax

cojobt

I can only report on my own experience, but so far I have not been impressed by the quality of service or by a sneaky €4 charge on my monthly bill for a security service to which I am supposed to have agreed.

My connection is through a WiMax 4G hub, which is placed on a second storey windowsill in a house on a hill on Letterkenny, in clear view and within range of the WiMax transmitter.

1) On Digiweb Metro I hit a constant 5 MB download. On WiMax, despite paying for 7MB, and being told by the installers that I should definitely get 6MB, I have never achieved higher than 4.5MB at any time of the day. €35 for UP TO 4.5 MB. Rubbish.

2) My monthly charge is €35. I recently noticed that €39 was debited from my bank account by Imagine. This was €4 in excess of my monthly rate. When I contacted one of the customer service agents, I was told that the extra €4 was for some sort of security package that I was subscribed to, to which I had allegedly agreed. Apparently, I received the service free for the first month. I was informed that I must have agreed to this.

I did not agree to this. I was not informed of this. Had I been informed of this, and even that I would get the first month free, I would have said no thanks.

I have been told that I will no longer be charged the extra €4 for the service. I had to request that the money would be credited back to my account. The agent said she would see to it. I will wait and see.

That's all I have to say about Wi Max so far. If things improve, I will say nice things, but as Imagine are currently cold-calling, hard-selling and sneakily stealing money off their customers, I thought I'd air my grievances with the rest of you. As I wrote in (my second) email of complaint to the company, were I not tied into a 12 month contract with the low, underhand, lying, underperforming, surreptitious company, I would leave today.

Cabaal

All Broadband is upto and as such even if you go with Smart, Magnet, Eircom on for example a 24MB package that doesn't mean you'll get 24MB....you very likely could get 13MB and thats acceptable for the package.

The security package is different to your "Broadband" service and has no baring on the contract for 12 months.

Anyway moving this to Midband forum.

cojobt

Cabaal wrote: »

All Broadband is upto and as such even if you go with Smart, Magnet, Eircom on for example a 24MB package that doesn't mean you'll get 24MB....you very likely could get 13MB and thats acceptable for the package.

I do believe people must have very poor expectations when they sign up for a package that says 7MB or 24MB and only receive 50% or 60% of what they paid for, and then say 'that's acceptable'. I am aware of the fact that that is the norm, and I was aware that that may be the case before I signed up to Imagine, but it should not be acceptable. However, that is a separate issue. I simply wanted to tell people about my experience of the service.

Cabaal wrote: »

The security package is different to your "Broadband" service and has no baring on the contract for 12 months.

I was referring to the whole Imagine Wi Max package when I said I would leave today. I have already stopped the €4 security package, although I should not have had to do this in the first place.

garrybenson

Beware, really Beware. Imagine.ie WiMax is not capable of any customer service whatsoever. It's been a nightmare couple of days for me with huge mobile phone costs while ringing through to their customer support line to ask why the download speed (and other problems) was well below half of what I had signed the contract for. I am going to withdraw my contract with Imagine on Monday as they have not honoured their part of the deal. Their selling agents called me multiple times while I dithered about signing and when I ask if a Technical Support person can call me back (after using €18 credit on my Vodafone mobile, dont get me started) they advise me that this in a incoming call centre only, no outgoing lines. We are not fools. Time to start a Facebook page to warn other people considering switching to Imagine.ie, Nice song guys but rip off service.:mad:

ClickityClick

I signed up for Imagine WiMax on September 24th 2010, and to date I've not heard any more from them. I'm still with my original provider. As they have not honoured their part of the contract, can I cancel?

garrybenson

ClickityClick wrote: »

I signed up for Imagine WiMax on September 24th 2010, and to date I've not heard any more from them. I'm still with my original provider. As they have not honoured their part of the contract, can I cancel?

You probably signed up as interested when they get WIMAX up and running in your area so I doubt it very much that you ahve a contract with Imagine. You should be OK. My advice is that they are absolutely awful and will frustrate the hell while charging you at every turn.

jor el

ClickityClick wrote: »

As they have not honoured their part of the contract, can I cancel?

There's nothing to cancel, the contract only begins when it's installed. Watch your bank account for direct debits, or write to your bank and tell them not to honour any DD from Imagine, should one arrive. Write or email Imagine, and tell them to keep it.

Count yourself one of the lucky ones not to be caught out with this.

ClickityClick

Thank you garrybenson and jor el. I have done as you advised, and I'm quite shocked that there hasn't been a peep from Imagine! I'll think twice before I listen to a fast-talking salesman again.

ClickityClick

Well they haven't REALLY gone away. Within three days, they e-mailed me with the activation no. to activate the Hub when it arrived. I told them that I was cancelling with them, and that I had instructed my Bank NOT to set up a direct debit. The Hub arrived, but I refused delivery! My bank account is still intact, wonder what their next move will be?

garrybenson

ClickityClick wrote: »

Well they haven't REALLY gone away. Within three days, they e-mailed me with the activation no. to activate the Hub when it arrived. I told them that I was cancelling with them, and that I had instructed my Bank NOT to set up a direct debit. The Hub arrived, but I refused delivery! My bank account is still intact, wonder what their next move will be?

Make sure your bank will honour your request. Imagine have a €150 charge for that Hub. BTW Imagine and Motorolla are in court over the effectiveness (or more appropriate ineffectiveness) of the Hub. They get pretty nasty so do make sure your bank have the direct debit blocked. Imagine may have some legal power to insist it is honoured. Good luck.

DMG_49

ClickityClick wrote: »

I signed up for Imagine WiMax on September 24th 2010, and to date I've not heard any more from them. I'm still with my original provider. As they have not honoured their part of the contract, can I cancel?

Tried signing up on the start of june being told that I would have bb at the end of the month. Rang up saying it never arrived and they said the courier was coming on the friday evening / saturday morning so waited and waited, no sign.

Same went on for the next few months up until then end of September. Got sick of hearing stories from there customer service.

There customer service is the most useless I have ever used nothing even comes close. I'd rather pay full whack for a crap connection than go back to them.

Stay away if you want it hassle free...:mad:

dianehyde

I signed up recently for Wimax - they took the €150 from my bank account. The engineers came to the house and deemed the signal "not good enough" for installation. I asked them about the €150 and they said that it wouldnt be taken.
It has been taken and I was sondering if anyone has had any bother getting the €150 back.
thanks

Irish Steve

Mine arrived today, and after a few minor hassles getting it live, the results are good enough at the moment to be happy to let the fixed line broadband (also Imagine) go off.





Had to tune up the laptop to get these speeds, initially, they were below 1.0 down, one change from Imagine on the router re the encryption method, the rest was down to the laptop WiFi being slow, as I was getting over 7Mb on the cable from the off,

Time will tell

Steve

Sponge Bob

Irish Steve wrote: »

Time will tell
Steve

Run the same test next tuesday once they hook up another 10 customers in Ashbourne and post back here :cool:

watty

Then in 6 months time

My speed on Digiweb Fixed Wireless is better than it was in Nov 2005.

Irish Steve

The WiFi is some way from the laptop, and I've ended up connecting a WAP unit to get a reasonable coverage throughout the house, and it's VERY evident that if there a number of WiFi users in the area, the performance sucks, but that's not Imagine's problem per se. To quantify that, results a few minutes ago, using Wifi,



Before I put the WAP unit in, the speeds were horrific at some times, until I tried the same test on the same machine using Ethernet, which made it very clear where the problems were, hence the WAP.

I've seen better speeds, higher downloads, and depending on the size of the file, considerably better upload speeds, it's very evident that Imagine are throttling the upload speeds before the end of the file,

It will be interesting indeed to see how this develops.

There are a number of issues with the Wimax router that are going to upset a number of IT professionals, the main one for me is the inability to set the subnet mask on the local address, and the non provision of the sign on password, that was nearly a showstopper for me, as I have a number of PC's and Printers on my LAN, not heavy use, but there, and I've had to change all the IP addresses as a result.

So, even over the weekend, the speeds have been OK.

Steve

akajackson

what information do you need to cancel imagine wimax? my mam is in rome and i need the cancel them tomorrow so i need to know which information I need to get from my mam before ringing them

upaho

"imagine...anything is possible" How about the 7Mbs unlimited broadband I signed up for?

Biggins

upaho wrote: »

"imagine...anything is possible" How about the 7Mbs unlimited broadband I signed up for?

You'd be so lucky!
Here is my speed right now on the 1st of March - and I am paying for as 7 meg service.
Once again I'm getting under one fourteenth of that!

watty

It's not unlimited. That inherently doesn't work on Wireless. Apart from fact that Imagine's fine print admits it's not unlimited.

The Speed is only an up-to. It's not a real Broadband speed as this is really a Mobile system on the wrong band. see http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056195355

TheMilkyPirate

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1189501883.png

2seconds later

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1189503188.png

Muck. And this is a 7mb package

ingen

baraca wrote: »

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1189501883.png

2seconds later

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1189503188.png

Muck. And this is a 7mb package

thats why its filed safely away under the "midband" forum