ihug vs slingshot

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milli

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#10472 24-Nov-2006 12:11

I'm looking to sign up for broadband and have narrowed my choice down to ihug or Slingshot based on availability and plans to suit my usage. I'd really appreciate some of your opinions on their performance (speed, reliability, support, etc) to help me decide. I will just be doing the usual browsing, emailing, downloading files, some uploading of a web site and my hubby wants to do some online gaming.

I have been trying to contact Slingshot with some questions for 9 days now with no luck - so I'm very unimpressed with their customer service!! Their phone system keeps cutting me off, when I do get through they say they'll call me back but never do, and they haven't answered an email I sent last Saturday. Is this normal with Slingshot???

Thanks in advance for any advice.

milli

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4335 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

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Lifetime subscriber

#53484 24-Nov-2006 12:39

Now thats a contrast to when they wouldn't stop ringing me no matter how much I told them not to.

You might want to consider Orcon, they have good pricing and what I've been experiencing lately much better service and value than xtra. Although I have to say xtras helpdesk is one of the best.

sectoid

14 posts

Geek

#53489 24-Nov-2006 12:43

depends what you value most. for me its download quota so slingshot is the clear winner. $50 per month for 25GB cant be beat. also very cheap for additional GBs. Slingshot have had several outages in the past but for the past few weeks its been very good for me at least, think it depends a lot on the area you're in.

grant_k

3539 posts

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#53491 24-Nov-2006 12:48

XNET from WorldxChange has a very flexible arrangement where you can buy just the amount of data you need without being locked into a fixed data cap. Details here:

http://www.xnet.co.nz/internet/broadband.shtml

XNET also don't insist that you sign up for Toll Calls with them (although I have found their toll call pricing very good). Most other ISPs will charge you $10 per month extra unless you sign up for Toll Calls with them.

XNET's help desk is also the best I have found from any ISP and I have previously (or currently) used all of the following:

Xtra
World-Net
Orcon
Paradise Net
ICONZ
iHUG
Compass Net
Clear Net
Slingshot

puggy

66 posts

Master Geek

#53492 24-Nov-2006 13:12

DONOT use IHUG,

I have been with ihug for a bit under a year now and there service used to be great. Since they opened the speed up about a month ago i haven't been able to get much more than about 2k about half the dialup speed and 90% of the time, international sites just keep timing out.

I have rung them and they just say i must live to far from the exchange yet it's at the end of my drive in suburbia and my neighbours on either side are with telecom and slingshot and seem to never have any problems. They also seem to blame telecom most of the time and can never give me an answer for why things never seem to work. I only really get good net about 2-3 days a month. I have also been emailing them everyday about there speeds yet i never get a reply they just don't care about there customers and I rate them worse than Xtra now.

Another thing to be aware of is in the time i have been with ihug, I have had to go several days in a row with no internet and no word form them. Not even an email to say sorry about the service you just read about it in the paper, like this one during this week. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10412049

Now P2P i just dont bother on ihug as i will be lucky to get 1k I tried to download OpenOffice(80MB) using Bittorrent After 3 weeks of being connected 24/7 using Bitcommet, it finished. Used a slingshot connection and it took about 40mins on P2P same 80MB file.

So in summing up ihug may give you decent download caps but you will never hit the limit as they throttle it back so much. I also have a slingshot account and have no problems with it, compared to ihug.

puggy

paradoxsm

3000 posts

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#53541 24-Nov-2006 18:30

orcon or slingshot seem to be the "top" choices for now but don't forget about some of the smaller ones whom might offer batter service.

And don;'t scoff at a "2Mb" plan, especially a good price with a good reliable connection. often this is all the line/datapipe on the net will even allow, getting above 2Mb is rare and 2Mb is pretty quick.

Forget ihug now, They are possibly now the worst internet company. Terrible customer service, Unexplained blackouts, email problems etc. The international data speed on ihug is the worst in the country... very slow.

cjmchch

264 posts

Ultimate Geek

#53543 24-Nov-2006 19:12

from my experiences with ihug .....it's a no go zone. They should change their name to islug now.

I am waiting for my disconnect to go through from ihug to try out with TelstraClear. Hopefully this will go well. Good luck with your choice

exportgoldman

1202 posts

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#53544 24-Nov-2006 19:24

I'm going to jump in and defend ihug here. People have very short memories when voting for ISP's.

ihug is the number 3 ISP for a reason, and they have just been brought out by Vodafone which wants to be the number 1 Telecommunications provider (ie pass Telecom) within 5 years.

I was in a meeting today with the national sales manager of Vodafone, and they are planning some big stuff for ihug/vodafone and are very annoyed with the ihug problems. They have had a run of bad luck this month with power outtages, Telecom exchange day long faults and spam surges.

I am on their 60GB/$79.95 plan (you can't get it anymore - but those that have it stay on it :-)

Their download speeds are approx 100KB - 150KB for limewire and otherwise im getting around 300KB, not a ideal world but fast enough considering the speed problems are mostly Telecom backhaul and ihug plan on spending 20Million on day one to rollout ADSL2+ 24Megabits to their customers.

Check out http://resources.nznog.org/Thursday-230306/LocalLoopUnbundlingPanel/Diprose.ppt

[I know you moderators will be along shortly to hyperlink this, why doesn't the system do it automatically - it must be a pain!]

I have used most ISP's in NZ and found a few things to be true. Xtra are expensive but eventually get problems fixed.

No matter what anyone tells you, other ISP's take far longer to get most issues sorted because it's usually a Telecom fault, and telecom delays them, which is why for corporate I usually reccomend Xtra.

Orcon are good, locally owned. Growing fast, provide international and wholesale backbone services for other smaller ISP's.

WorldXChange are good, and when Naked DSL comes out (broadband without having to purchase a phone line) you can get a VoIP phone line from them for $11 a month INCLUDING all the smartphone features and voicemail. Naked DSL is happening mid next year.

Also TelstraClear's PSQ service seems to be very fast from reports I've heard, and if you are in line of site to one of their many wireless links you can get their wireless service $250/month for a 2 Megabit (both ways) service which has very low ping and can sustain 2 Megabits (unlike Telecom) They have lower cost plans as well for $$ watching.

[Moderator edit (bradstewart): hyperlinked (for our sanity use the text editor or learn HTML)]

Tyler - Parnell Geek - iPhone 3G - Lenovo X301 - Kaseya - Great Western Steak House, these are some of my favourite things.

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puggy

66 posts

Master Geek

#53583 25-Nov-2006 09:50

" from my experiences with ihug .....it's a no go zone. They should change their name to islug now. "

Hey cjmchch,

I have just done the same emailed and cancelled but are not going to pay there early disconnect fee as they just haven't given me what they promised (internet connection, broadband) as all this week my net hasn't worked and they still haven't replied to any of my emails sent on my slingshot connection. If they want the money I will seek legal advice I have just had enough of probably the most useless company.

In there defence I have to say they were half decent till about month ago but now they just don't care and don't seem to be fixing anything....

puggy

cjmchch

264 posts

Ultimate Geek

#53605 25-Nov-2006 13:14

Hi Puggy

It seems that for many ihug's performance has been less than satisfcatory.

If you have had no service then make sure you turn your router off and restart and see if that fixes your connection. They did have problems this week but from what I understand that has been resolved.

A word of advice here.

Initiate their complaints procedure by complaining to a senior customer services rep and get him to confirm in writing via email your concerns and what they are going to do to fix it. (Not that it matters as you are leaving)

Ask him what the policy is regarding shaping and the chnage in Terms and Conditions and their policy on eraly disconnections due to those changes.

Request a waiver to that fee and also a rebate on your monthly fee due to lack of/poor service.

Given their problems it won't be hard to get that information. They generally take days to resond to emails that are sent via their help service so disregard that channel.

........and exportgoldman

good on you for sticking up for ihug. If ytou are getting good service and speeds and feel that you are getting what you are paying for then great. I'd be the first to do that as well. But as I and others have found, we have been less fortunate.

If ihug manages to improve it's company performance, its customer support and it's delivered service to a level that I would call satisfactory then I may look at them again, but from where I sit there is no future at this stage.

I pay $70 a month to have a 3.5mbit connection and a 30gig cap. It takes me two days to download a 650meg file from my own ftp server on the Time Warner servers in the US. That is disgraceful for somebody with a 3.5megabit connection.

I would be interested in knowing what your setup is with regrad what router you use, whether you have a static IP or not (I do) and what setting you have for your port forwarding re torrents. I even tried that avenue and still cannot get above dial up speeds.

cjmchch

richms

28179 posts

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Lifetime subscriber

#53607 25-Nov-2006 13:21

Mums connection is with ihug, and ever since the full line speed thing started, it has been crappier then ever. It was better when it was on 256/128 for browsing.

The all day outage which they blamed on telecom (when other ISPs were uneffected) was the last straw. We are moving it to xtra because that will also mean we can lose the crappy ihug toll service and not be penalised $10 a month and lose half the offpeak cap.

ihugs phone services are a joke, even calling them is often problematic and has that horrid cheap voipness about it.

edit: also, the email has become a joke recently. They are clearly still filtering my emails even tho I have the filters set to off, since my spam volume thru it is down from 2-300 a day to about 60, along with the legitimate emails often not making it.

I have complained about the email issues and they say that there is no filtering in place, which is a lie.

Richard rich.ms

crabsdf

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#53741 26-Nov-2006 20:43

On slingshots 25GB (8mbit/128) plan, just did a speedtest:

Download Speed: 45 kbps (5.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 118 kbps (14.8 KB/sec transfer rate)

Been like that all day. Very unreliable, helpdesk not helpful.

andysh

228 posts

Master Geek

#53761 26-Nov-2006 22:23

I am on the "broadband starter 2Mb" from Ihug, which is spose to be a 2mb/128k line with 4gb downloads, just did this speed test from nzdsl.co.nz

Download Speed: 2566 kbps (320.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 128 kbps (16 KB/sec transfer rate)

Out-peformed it, now that is something you wont see everyday :P

EDIT: Just did a internation test from bandwidthplace.com, bit of a difference

Communications 229.2 kilobits per second
Storage 28 kilobytes per second
1MB file download 36.6 seconds

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Tesla: https://ts.la/andrew897313

Sharesies: https://sharesies.com/r/XRGS77

ranchuc

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#53764 27-Nov-2006 01:56

I haven't been overly impressed with ihugs new plans but my performance hasn't been to bad. Back in the days when there was only 8mbit or 192k with a 500mb or 1gb cap my line speed was 6.7mbit, it then went down to 4ish when I was on 2/3.5mbit plans and now that I'm on full speed again its at 4.2mbit and according it telecom and ihug its my problem.

Apart from my line speed not increasing my speed is really fast with ihug for national and international. speedtest.net gives down/up of 4032kbit/744kbits (504kB/93kB) and 59ms ping from Napier to Auckland

For bittorrent I download at about 70-280kB/s and upload at max (I have a linux router which I de-prioritize my BT traffic with)

I have a VPS in America which I run Torrentflux on for most of BTing and I download from that at sustained 497kB/s via http

I'm not very pro ihug at the moment as I made the mistake of changing from the 60GB plan to there new Broadband 4 with only 20GB and $2 per GB over, and they won't allow me to change back. Also when I moved from Orcon to ihug I had to go on a 12 month contract and get the free connection and modem (both of which I had and didn't need) or had to pay a $99 connection fee.

So while I'm not full of praise for ihug I have found there speeds great and there help desk competent and generally helpful, also the fact that they give a free static IP (as Orcon do and perhaps other) is another bonus.

DKS1DR

37 posts

Geek

#53771 27-Nov-2006 08:33

andysh: I am on the "broadband starter 2Mb" from Ihug, which is spose to be a 2mb/128k line with 4gb downloads, just did this speed test from nzdsl.co.nz

Download Speed: 2566 kbps (320.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 128 kbps (16 KB/sec transfer rate)

Out-peformed it, now that is something you wont see everyday :P

EDIT: Just did a internation test from bandwidthplace.com, bit of a difference

Communications 229.2 kilobits per second
Storage 28 kilobytes per second
1MB file download 36.6 seconds

I am on the same plan. And mine is absolute [expletive]. I am only getting 3090kbps out of my max 2Mbps download, and 130kbps upload.

For bandwidthplace.com, I got the following;
Communications 440.6 kilobits per second
Storage 53.8 kilobytes per second
1MB file download

[Moderator (MF): expletive removed]

crabsdf

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#53850 27-Nov-2006 18:13

crabsdf: On slingshots 25GB (8mbit/128) plan, just did a speedtest:

Download Speed: 45 kbps (5.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 118 kbps (14.8 KB/sec transfer rate)

Been like that all day. Very unreliable, helpdesk not helpful.

And the day after:

Communications 119.3 kilobits per second
Storage 14.6 kilobytes per second
1MB file download 1.2 minutes

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