Digiweb Tooway Deception

black__bamboo

I recently signed up for Digiweb's Tooway satellite service after moving to a new home and discovering that we were faced with no alternative. After making a few inquiries on the phone and deciding to think it over (the meagre data limits putting me off), i received a call from a sales rep who informed me that a 'special offer of unlimited data from December 1st to end May 2012' was currently in effect. Apparently he was taking the time to make we aware of this as he thought it might help me make up my mind. A day or two later i decided to go ahead and put in the order (we are on a 12 month rental lease so i figured we would not have the suffer the restricted data limit for too long) andthe sales rep i spoke with confirmed that the unlimited data to May 2012 was indeed a current promotion, so i went ahead and put in an order for the most basic package costing me 39.99 euro per month plus 250 installation charge. within a week or so a technician installed the dish, the system was up and run and the speed tests were decent at around 4 to 5Mbps. Happy days . 3 days later our connection was throttled back to a frustratingly slow level and i called to find out what had happened. Cue a technician explaining that we had 'overused' our limit and would have to contend with restricted service for the rest of the month. Apparently he had never heard of the 'special offer' and assured me that the people at Tooway would never sanction such an offer as the system could not support it. Eventually i tracked down the sales agent who admitted he had 'made a mistake' and that i would now have to be content with no service for the remaining 3 weeks of the monthly billing cycle and that the service would then resume at the normal level for the package i had signed up for which limits my data to 4GB per month. After telling him pretty much where he could shove that idea he has so far restored the service but offered only to extend my data allowance to 16GB until March when it will then revert back to 4GB per month. he also offered a month's refund or if i didn't find this acceptable, i could cancel the contract and they would take away the equipment.

Is there anyonee out there in a similar position? I was told by the sales agent that therer were another '30 or 40' customers who signed up under the same false pretences so i am wondering what the outcome was for them. I have yet to tell Digiweb if I want to keep the service based on the new conditions, but to me it's an extremely bad sign and i am very wary of a two year contract with them, considering how they handled this.

Sponge Bob

Total bandwidth available on the Ireland / UK spot beam, even for a very large sat like Ka Sat, is about the same amount that a lot of small rural exchanges have. Older sats are even more miserable.

These throttles will always be with us when it comes to Sats , way it is. It seems that you were missold by a sales agent trying to make his bonus. Had you asked about the caps here before you signed up you would have been put straight.

black__bamboo

Thanks for reply. Well yes I did do some homework in advance which was why I was wary but as I said, satellite was our only option. It was digiweb or QSat basically, and in the end we opted for digiweb based on the fact that we were offered unlimited data until end of May 2012. After confronting the sales Rep with his 'mistake' he stated that the offer was only for 'high end business customers' and that he had sold me the offer as a result of receiving an incorrect memo/leaflet at work! Dude.. whatever :-/ ... in response I suggested that the '30 or 40 customers who he claims are in a similar situation to me should be allowed to keep the offer as they also had entered into two year contracts under false pretences. Hr keeps fobbing me off and saying that management do not agree. Totally frustrated and hoping to connect on here with anyone else who experienced the same. Or perhaps I was just unlucky with the sales agent who is trying to pull the wool over ...

Sponge Bob

Fair point. The T&Cs are exactly the same for Digiweb and for Qsat as it happens. There is an hourly and daily and weekly max as well as the monthly cap. Complete pain in the hole.

Next time you move somewhere rural make sure you read what Big Lar did down in rural West Waterford..

Here >> http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056423539

He built his own community ISP for a small number of households, took him 6 weeks from start to finish. Not that complex to do and far superior to Satellite.

black__bamboo

Thanks for the link. Yeah would love to get into something more community-minded. Don't get me started on the 'rural' thing though. we are 15 minutes from cork city, renting, and we were told by the agent who showed us the house that the house was broadband ready...specifically eircom.. the house was also advertised on daft as having internet. we discovered on moving in that not only is is not possible to get broadband through eircom, but you cannot even get a reliable mobile phone signal anywhere in the house. With two small kids and all the hassle of trying to find another house, move all our stuff again etc we just couldn't face into it again so we opted to stay. trying times.. feel like making a property agent + sales agent bonfire ;-)

on top of that, right before all this happened, Ripplecom came out to do a test for their wireless broadband, said it wouldn't work and then charged my bank 200 or so euro anyway just for the hell of it. Rip-you-a-new-ass-com by the time i was finished with them i was so pissed off.
of course, tragically/comically we are not in the NBS because Ripplecom operate 'in our area' according to a spokeshead from the Department of Communications.. regardless of course whether you can actually avail of their service. Oh sweet jesus...

On a side note, i recently heard of a San Francisco based company called Webpass offering 200Mbps internet connection for residential customers using this technology:

https://www.saftehnika.com/solutions/isp

What would need to happen in Ireland to get something like that going?!

Sponge Bob

It may cheer you to know that there are also blackspots just like yours 15 miles from the centre of Limerick, Galway and even the so called internet capital of Dublin.

There are alternatives to Ripple such as Nova Networks.

http://www.novanetworks.ie/

and that there may well be others, most ISPs in Cork use the CIX and you can see a customer list on their home page.

http://www.cix.ie/

Don't believe an estate agent next time. The only proof you can get eircom broadband in a rural area is a DSL Synch light on a router....but you can also ask the neighbours before you do a deal.