[WXC/VFX] Should I switch over to Xnet from slingshot???

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › [WXC/VFX] Should I switch over to Xnet from slingshot???

hamdiya

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#29335 3-Jan-2009 19:27

Hi all,

I'm getting fed up from slingshot with their lousy service, you know, the bandwidth shaping they always come to deny! I dont even bother calling "customer support" as many have done before me and just ended up wasting more time. The only thing keeping me from moving to another ISP is the so temping free off-peak hours.

Today I came accross Xnet which have something very similar, the 75 gig/month free off-peak. I'm quite tempted to switch over to them but worry that i'll be worse off than i am now.

Can any xnet users tell me the current performance please?? are you a new/old customer? I really dont want to go through the hassle of moving to find out xnet is just an alias for slingshot.

Thanks eveyone, much appreciate your input!

BlakJak

1275 posts

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#187220 3-Jan-2009 20:07

Try reading the forum?

There's been a lot of very negative feedback about Xnet lately. I wouldn't presently recommend them to anyone.

No signature to see here, move along...

Batman

Mad Scientist
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Lifetime subscriber

#187226 3-Jan-2009 20:33

i'm with you on this one hamdiya. i was warned about the non existant customer service that slingshot provides. but was tempted by the free off peak. then a week after i joined they offered free 1 terabytes of data! arrrgh. now i'm stuck as i don't want to pay to get off slingshot. will wait till it's off contract then we'll see if prices come down on the other providers. telecom still offers the best customer service in my opinion.

hellonearthisman

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#187249 3-Jan-2009 22:05

I like Slingshot, as it's the cheapest. Free data from 1am to 7am as well as data balock and data banking.

I don't know who you talkn to but Slingshot don't deny prioritising there traffic, it's even written in the terms and conditions.

Speeds are pretty good recently too.

raytaylor

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#187268 4-Jan-2009 02:05

Around october they were shaping but i though slingshot fixed all that up and bought some more capacity.

Ray Taylor

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hamdiya

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#187465 5-Jan-2009 11:22

I take it it's not worth the hassle moving to xnet is it?

After reading more posts on pc world forums, there was no definite consensus about Xnet. Many praise it while many blame it!

Slingshot did not use to shape traffic this way before...i dont recall they used to at all! When i first joined them back in...umm...July, i used to easily get 5-6Mb/s anytime of the day, including the free off-peak. But sometime in September things started going downhill. Downloads would drop to about..20KB/s-ish just minutes after starting a download. Lately things have gotten better, but still not good. Download speeds can be sustained at about 70-100KB/s.

There is a trick, for slingshot users, whereby if you pause your download then resume it waiting two minutes in between, download speeds will go back up really high for roughly 30 seconds. I wrote a small program that does exactly this, but you need to be using flashget. With it, I manage to squeeze about 1-1.5GB more during the free off-peak download hours (about 6 hours).

I guess I’m better off just riding out the ‘bandwidth-crunch’ wave for now...after all, I do manage to get 50GB/month download for $49.95 ;)

euanandrews

1528 posts

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#187473 5-Jan-2009 12:09

Take it from me, an ex xnet subscriber...

DO NOT change to xnet.

If you most desire the 'free data' periods...then forget it...your struggle to get the 75GB.

The free download time has been shrunk from 12-8am to 2-8am, and they pool all the people on the plan...

This not only limits how much you can download, but also adversly affects the service in general during those hours...

During the free hours, you will struggle just to view a web-page, let alone even think of doing gaming.

Xnet used to be a favorite here on Geekzone, hence the many recommendations, even from myself...but not no longer.

The 'Torrent' plan ruined their reputation and made their service unusable and a farce.

I know how rubbish Slingshot's service is too...I am currently with them, but their free download period is far more usable than xnet's.

Recommendation:

Stay with slingshot, or look elsewhere, forget xnet.

hellonearthisman

1819 posts

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#187503 5-Jan-2009 13:29

Slingshots speeds have been getting better, unless you use some bulk downloading services like rapaidshare or usenet (BINS) which get prioritised.

On slingshot free time I have been getting full speed for getting down podcasts 800kBps and other general surfing.
I don't need to D/L the whole internet, I just get 2-4GB a night, which is a lot of data.
In the last month I have used 112.7GB of free data and my month isn't up until the 8th.