Ok fellow OZBs - who takes the OZB Shonky award for the worst internet provider? Take a moment to cast your vote - Who is the worst and why ?
OZB Shonky Awards - Which ISP Is The Worst and Why?
Poll Options
- 246TPG
- 153Telstra
- 119Optus
- 58BuzzTelco
- 43Dodo
- 34MyRepublic
- 31iiNet
- 26Belong
- 21Exetel
- 10Other (please state)
- 7Internode
- 6Iprimus
- 5AussieBroadband
- 4Infinity Telco
- 4Spintel
- 3Australia Broadband
- 3Skymesh
- 2Telecube
- 2Amaysim
- 2Mungi
- 2Mate Communicate
- 0Foxtel ISP
Comments
Maybe you should buy a new keyboard or a new mouse, ive heard the latest models have a special chip that reduces lag.
Is a new keyboard supposed to plug into my phone, tablet or laptop? I don't own a desktop. Even so, sarcasm back at you.
Well my point is you really should ask for help to understand the entire system, what and who is responsible for which items. Its hard to know if you just used the wrong terms or WIFI is the problem or WIFI is what you call the internet. I would suggest you ask someone you trust to take a look, because your blurb leads to more confusion than help;
@ninetyNineCents: let me spell this out for you. Which I just did above.
Everything was fine before I changed to TPG. Now I am having trouble with wired and wireless internet, wired and wireless phones. I was on NBN before but switched to save a few bucks.
I think I'm quite safe in my assumption that something is wrong with TPG.
well i would have to agree with your last comment to me. However it was confusing how you phrased your problem in your original post which well made a few people including myself confused.
As i said in another post, TPG actually does little, the "line" you are using is probably telstra, the exchange is probably telstra. For better or worse it sounds like TPG needs at the very least to get the wholesaler (the NBN company or telstra) to look at their stuff …
@ninetyNineCents: Is it weird how my next door neighbour is connected up to the exact same "line" on Telstra and has no problems? (At least, I thought they were) When I was on Telstra, I had no problems. Suddenly when I switch to TPG, there is a whole world of issues. A lot of the time I can connect up, but sometimes the connection is secured and connected, but no internet is coming through.
Something is quite fishy here. It was working fine with Telstra until I switched.
So you were with Telstra retail, and whiched to tpg retail. So Telstra retail told Telstra wholesale they lost a customer to tpg, switch Mr Pennypincher over to tpg retail and you have issues, maybe you should ask Telstra. I suspect they might not be happy to lose you as retail and they control the wholesale as well remember.
@cloudy: Telstra didn't exactly seem keen to do any reasonable prices. I asked them, gave them the offer and said what is the best you can do? They didn't exactly sell me.
While it is possible, I don't see what accusing Telstra is going to do. Until Telstra comes out with a good deal I'm not going with them. I'll deal with the issues.
But I wasn't with Telstra last. I have been with them the longest but I had a brief period of Dodo in between there and they were better than TPG (although not as good as Telstra)P: Is it weird how my next door neighbour is connected up to the exact same "line" on Telstra and has no problems?
99: Perhaps ,but it could be something like your home "line" whatever it may be, is connected to a dodgy node on their big fancy box at the exchange. I would ask TPG to reset and move you to another node. It shouldnt take them "long" they have staff who visit or live at those places.
@ninetyNineCents: Hmmm, yeah I might see what I can do - haven't thought of that. Thanks for the info.
This can happen. Telstra aren't legally allowed to reserve better pairs (bits of copper) for their customers but it's well documented that if you had a perfect line then swapped from Telstra to another carrier they will often give you a different piece of copper to work with. It is also often not the same quality as the previous one. It sometimes goes the other way though and you get an improvement.
I can't believe I'm defending TPG…. the devil!
ninetyNineCents has practical advice. I'm guessing he's worked Telco before. Send in evidence of the issue again and ask for a port swap. It might also be worth asking for a stability profile although that sometimes results in speed loss so be careful to get a before and after snapshot
Been with them for 12+ years, no problems. But I'm 200m from the exchange, don't need any service here.
Been with tpg for more than 10 yeats and got nothing :/, even though we told them our speeds were really slow
Been with tpg since dialup days (TIG) … About 6 house/unit moves and now on NBN with them… Have never had anything major in that decade and a half… Then again I'm an IT guy so I tend to fix my own issues most the time… Can't vote against them in my case.
My mate had big issues with his internet and was going off at iprimus because nothing they did thier side fixed it, I checked his socket, the wires inside were hanging by a thread, and the cable was kinkier than me, I replaced the cable, tightened up the wire connections and charged him $50 he has perfect internet now lol. In our house a slowdown means the modem hasnt been turned off in a month, a simple reboot fixes all.
I too have been with TPG for more than 10 yrs, 3yrs now when their FTTB came out and also helped me avoid the NBN nightmare. 99.8% up time. Thumbs up for them and it's only $59.99 for 90Mbps Down and 50Mpbs Up.
Whats with TPG ?? - Lots of votes for worst ISP but lots of people seems to love them too. Talk about a polarising company!!
They are cheap, and provide a suitable service. But when things go wrong, and the user has no idea, the user will expect everything from the ISP and complaints occur.
Thats basically it, and the internet can be complicated.
The worse part is when people start blaming the call centres for being a certain race (irks me) and not understanding.
You're partly right, but when things go wrong with ISPs that are topping this list it is next to impossible to get a straight answer from ANYONE or timely fix.
Plus the fact that you have to wait on hold for so long to speak to anybody like you're calling Centrelink doesn't help either.
It simply has more customers.
You should be asking people to rate their ISP out of 5.
TPG will have more ratings than most, but chances are their average score wouldn't be too terrible.
https://www.productreview.com.au/c/internet-service-provider…
FTTB is great from what I hear.
another member here to stand up for tpg. i have been with them for 7 years now and cannot say a bad thing about them. great plans, great pricing, and contrary to what others say, awesome customer service. yes they are overseas (phillipines i believe) however i have only had the best experiences with them. in the 2 occasions where my speed was slower than usual, they did the appropriate line tests, escalated to level 2 and then had a tech out the next day. all resolved within 3 days.
Metro? They have a pretty good metro network by all accounts
yes, melbourne eastern suburbs. adsl 2 +
I was once on the TPG rage train.. had FTTB but there were frequent spikes and timeouts. Was ready to quit once the contract was up. However, I discovered that it was the crappy wifi modem that TPG provided. Moved to a better wifi router ( and 5Ghz) and it was all good
I didn't sign up for them, I signed up for iiNet. The support I get now when I call because there is a problem with my connection is terrible compared to what it was a few years ago. I spent a month back and forth with them telling me to format my computer and try a new modem to try and fix the issue.
It only ended up getting resolved after I paid to upgrade to a business account so I could speak with someone who knew what they were doing and were in the same country as me. Once I got to speak to someone in Perth the problem was fixed within an hour after the call and it was something on their end.
The decline since the buyout has been pretty extreme.
Many people seem to consider it a pastime to enter contracts without reading them and then kick up a fuss later on when things don't go their way.
I'm astonished SPINTEL isn't up there!
Why? Can you elaborate on what was wrong with them ?
Would be better if I were to elaborate on what isn't wrong with them.
Other than long waiting times (20+ minutes) everytime you call them, they've always been prompt with resolving my issues whenever I get hold of them. The callback option instead of waiting online is good if your issue is not urgent.
Mate Communicate. Absolute joke. I swear it’s run by 2 teenagers in their mum’s basement. Shocking speeds, lots of excuses, took 2 weeks to connect, constant drop outs, always with the fake “I feel for you bro… but our hands are tied.” catch phrase.
They give discounts and incentives if you get on productreview and leave them a 5 star review. I was due a refund for unusable service and because it was taking too long and so many excuses, I got the TIO involved. Mate Communicate cancelled the refund because they said it was now going to be used to pay their fine. I left negative feedback on productreview and they contacted me saying that if I removed my review and replaced it with a 5 Star review, they would refund me…
90+% of the reviews for Mate are shills, paid to leave 5 Star comments.
Lol That is truely shonky! You should keep the email of them asking for a 5 star review and send it to the TIO.
I did. I also sent it to Productreview to show them that Mate is using shills to boost their reviews.
Neither have been interested enough to chase it up…
You should put a link to the email in your review
Another dead give away that shills are being used is the sheer amount of reviews left by people who only have 1 review. Their only review is for Mate Communicate.
As I said, I gave all this info to the TIO and PR, and it went dead in the water…
@pegaxs:why not post it here. Its on public record at least. Ppl need to know about tgis sort of BS! just remove any persomal information before you post.
Exactly. They're a new start-up with vocus doing all the heavy lifting. They have been featured on product review with 5 star reviews despite the little control they have over their network which seemed suspect. Now I know why
Please send this to Choice! They do an annual shonky review and a bit of consumer law lobbying. If that doesn't work I'm a paid member and may be able to lodge evidence on your behalf.
They seem to also won the 2017 award…
wheres vaya
vaya is a mobile service provider
Dont they do adsl/nbn as well??
Hi OP, please add Infinity Telco
Can you elaborate whats wrong with them ?
Also I must confess that I have no idea how to add to the poll - help!
Poor speed on ADSL and No customer service at all. No one responds when you call on the helpline number.
Infinity Telco added.
Thanks. Can you add iinet too?
@WTF:
Sure, done. Let me know if anymore or press report on deal/comment if I'm not online and ask for mod to add it to the bottom.
@hamza23:when you get a chance, can you add the following to poll?
Foxtel isp
Mungi
Mate Communicate
Spintel
Australia Broadband
SkymeshMany thanks!
Isn't this a pointless survey, surely Telstra, TPG and Optus will get higher votes due to more customer base.
And AussieBroadband should be better ISP compare to TPG, you don't need a survey for that.Good point and I totally get that more people will use telstra, Optus and TPG (most people will understand this) but its sometime hard to pick an ISP especially if you are not going with a big provider.
BTW not everyone knows about AussieBroadband. I didn't know until i switched from Buzz. Agree, they are good and I see they have no votes!
Bottom line - cast your vote. Tell us who you think is the worst from your experience.
Well how do I know if I'm on the Shonky ISP? without been on all.
I been with Transact, before NBN came to the picture, connection was smooth (monopoly and price was expensive), then they taken over by IINET.
Iinet connection sometimes good sometimes bad, would it be a the best ISP? No.
Would I change to Telstra or AussieBroadband? No. they are way over my budget.In my view, to be a Shonky ISP, it has to be; Not value for money, Bad connection and bad customer service. In Tesltra's case, you should hope your connection is good forever as their customer service is hell bad.
So you got my point?
Sounds like you haven't met a truly Shonky ISP yet. Trust me you will know when you meet one!
You need to run another survey on OzBargain to work out the distribution of ISPs. Then compare with this survey and see which one has higher uplift. Though all in all, you will still have a bias survey :P.
i'm with AussieBB and I love em!
There's also no ability to down vote an option either to counter balance the voting. The only people voting are people with poor experiences with a certain company, but what about people with good experiences with a company, surely that should counter it.
haha yep. survey of most popular isp
the thing i find confusing about the poll is, how can i vote which is the worst without trying all of them?
another thing, MyRepublic uses Optus CVC, so its likely people having problems with Optus will have the same congestion on MR, spintel, exetel etc.
also my connection with TPG is flawless.
Point taken but this is why I also think we should have a poll. I was with Belong (bad) and then went to BuzzTelco who were horrendous (thats putting things politely). I have also tried excetel and TPG in the past and they were ok but Buzz wins hands down for me.
Its impossible to test all for any given person but I am hoping people would put forward their collective experience which may help in choosing an ISP
That's interesting! Belong is with Telstra i thought, were their speeds good or just bad service?
Thats what I initially thought. They are owned by Telstra but Belong apparently does not use Telstra infrastructure. From memory they're actually isp in a box or some other cheap crap.
Their services is hopelessly congested. The connection would drop out for 5-10 seconds intermittently every evening so streaming anything was terrible. customer services was worse - took like an hour on the phone to speak to anyone and their stock answer to everything was 'reset your modem'. Never again.
@Savas: Yea I know right ?? I am like a shit magnet with ISPs!
Switched to Aussie broadband finally and loving it so far. No issues and speeds are great. Fingers crossed that it stays that way.
This is why I did this poll - Help people work out the issues and problems before making a choice.
@WTF:
Belong uses Telstra, in the end there are only a small handful are actually providing the connectivity, the others just have a phone line and collect money from you and do little else. All others are just resellers, just like mobile.
I was with belong too. Wifi strength was bad, keeps dropping out. Then internet would not work despite troubleshooting and they had to come out to fix. The last time it disconnected, i rang up and said don't bother coming out, just cancel my account.
I’m with belong adsl (old school sorry) right now. Sometimes it’s pretty decent for my basic browsing needs. Most of the time, when I actually need to get things done, it is horrendously slow. 15sec - 1min to load a website.
I like things old school
Bring back memories!
optus babackhaul probably tier 3 company that has 0 say in how cvc is allocated and can't see it being monitored. Coupled with a crap after sales service is what you get.
@WTF It was more of a poor choice on your part. You now know that the unlimited model in unsustainable on the nbn (should be a little better with the pricing being revised)
How do internet caps help, if no matter how limited, everyone uses it at the same time eg. Streaming services
My response was more in line with the current CVC cost and how unlimited cheap isps oversubscribe, refuse to add additional capacity or are at the mercy of their tier 1 sellers.
Also, streaming doesn't download at the full speed but at only the speed it needs. Youtube, for instance, doesn't buffer the whole video but in segments to save on the bandwidth whilst watching a normal video. A speed test being run constantly would be a bigger detriment to the isp. Capping a service helps alleviate the stress on the network as it establishes boundaries and enables more people to use the service or allow the isp to better invest that money into say more cvc. We have a ridiculous CVC price of what $15.25/Mbp and with companies signing up everyone without buying the capacity and offering them an all you can eat buffet sullies the experience.
So I would say it helps in the sense of control and future planning
Telstra are shocking at getting a new NBN connection hooked up while Internode and iiNet are usually flawless. Telstra don't suffer from congestion while the smaller companies like MyRepublic do. It's really hard to single out one ISP.
Sounds like you haven't really encountered a truly Shonky one yet. Well done on your choices so far.
Quite the opposite, I frequently deal with them in business. Optus frequently disconnect services for no reason and Telstra techs never show.
Lol you in retail space too?… The stories we have specifically NBN wise are out of this world… 3rd world country stuff lolll
@scud70: Not in the retail space. I'm usually dealing with their business/enterprise support.
IT MSP is my profession.
@Clear: I've had to deal with Optus as a hosting services manager, data centres, cross connects etc as well as links and so on and they are the worst by a mile…. Just rubbish on so many levels I can't even start… My vote for that loser of a company over any…
@scud70: Yep agreed. I usually have Optus setup as secondary connection for fail over (not my choice) and most of the time their service isn't active as the Optus techs haven't set it up or the entire connection just falls over.
Pretty useless poll really, as others have pointed out the large customer bases have high dissatisfaction, plus discount retailers tend to have high compliants, yet the cheaper price explains the service differences.
Ok I am open to suggestions on how to improve the poll. How does a fellow OZBs work out who is the worst ?? should it just focus on customer service ?
Well if you want the best customer service just go with an isp known for quality service, probably a premium priced one like Aussie broadband. But on Ozbargain a lot of people want value too. Hence why you see comments from people saying they like TPG, because although it can be slow to service on call centres for example they provide a good product, at a good price, plus u really don’t need to contact them that often. I only contact my isp once every 2 years I think for an issue. So service level isn’t very important
Answers should be…
ISP A, used and I like.
ISP A, used and I don't like.
ISP B, used and I like.
ISP B, used and I don't like.Then you can get a percentage of each ISP.
But I don't know if ozbargain let's you pick multiple things in a poll.I agree. Having used TPG and being completely satisfied, i feel like the reason it has so many dislikes is because it has the most customers rather than because it is any worse than some of the other cheap providers.
(profanity) tpg
Yea - why is that ?? TPG is not getting a lot of love here! I had thought they were one of the better providers.
Absolute garbage, told customer support to change our home ohone number twice and did nothing, speeds are also terrible.
Speeds are usually relevant to your distance from the exchange and the line itself
I see what you mean my speeds are low today https://imgur.com/a/Zh9ES TPG are a metro provider, I would not vouch for them outside of a major city, but in a metro area, hard to beat for value and speeeed. I was hacked badly and asked TPG for a new IP. I got a new VIOP modem, a new Ip and a new number, all done and dusted in a week (sans fees). Did you ask nicely?
@stormii: here on the farm also good speeds and value. even people still on ADSL here have good service.
Agree