So much for zero-rated Steam

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › So much for zero-rated Steam

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Handle9

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#658745 19-Jul-2012 22:35

Boogs:
I get free drink refills at Burger King so I'm going to complain and demand that BK ensures I get free refills at McDonalds.

Your analogy should be "I get free refills at Burger King unless Burger King is supplying McDonalds Coke cause they don't have enough of their own. The only way you'll know is by looking under the Coke machine if you read the side of the cup."

There's two sides to this but it's pretty clear it isn't clear for users what is and isn't metered. Personally I don't really think that Orcon has been deliberately misleading people. It's one of those unfortunate circumstances that may require a little goodwill on both sides.

stevenz

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#659068 20-Jul-2012 13:40

The issue as I see it, isn't whether or not it's "right" but whether or not it is\was misleading to people who take what the big banner says at face value & who may not have the nous to investigate further.

Sounds like they should've looked at the temperamental way Steam works and decided not to touch it with a ten foot pole in the first place.

I also don't entirely buy the "at our cost" bit. Running a local cache means the ISP not having to pay for international traffic every time anyone downloads Diablo 3. If the cost of the hardware & admin involved > traffic saved, then fine.

It appears to me that there was never an intent to mislead, merely poor judgement.

@KnightNZ

networkn

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#659394 21-Jul-2012 01:54

Sounds like they should've looked at the temperamental way Steam works and decided not to touch it with a ten foot pole in the first place.

THIS! This whole topic could have been solved by THIS.

It's not temperamental though, they should have investigated how it worked and decided based on the fact they wouldn't be able to control the traffic and opted to not provide it.

Orcon as usual put themselves under pressure and leave themselves open to poor feedback and loss of it's reputation by failing to perform proper due diligence.

Ragnor

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#659395 21-Jul-2012 01:55

stevenz:

Sounds like they should've looked at the temperamental way Steam works and decided not to touch it with a ten foot pole in the first place.

Steam downloads from multiple content mirrors by design not because it's temperamental, most of the world doesn't have NZ or AU style data caps.

The way I see it both Orcon and the OP made mistakes here.

1: The OP probably should have read the FAQ and the PR properly
2: Orcon's banner image/ad in Steam wasn't clear

.. a bit of good will and meet in the middle and problem will be solved.

Pretty sure most sane people reached this conclusion pages back

Mojocrunch

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#660032 22-Jul-2012 19:45

I'm pretty happy with Orcon zero for steam. But that's only because I use Steammanager. During these Steam sales I have downloaded over 98gb for free. There are a bunch more games i need to download that aren't being downloaded when steammanager limits it to the orcon server, so that'll have to come out of my cap, but I'm still happy.

At the end of the day though, Orcon is the worst ISP I have EVER had, and i've only been with them for 2 months. The internet is great. Speeds are great. If you DO connect to the orcon steam server, it never fails to downloaded at less than 1.3mb/s, usually 1.5mb/s.

I rang them yesterday though cause it says I have gone 125gb over my cap. (because the website says my cap is one third of my actual cap) and they said don't worry about it. I told them I do worry about it, and what they are going to do about it. They said that there is nothing they can do about it but that i 'shouldn't' get a bill for a 65gb plan, but for a 200gb plan... after my previous 2 months with them, that hasn't filled me with confidence.

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#660056 22-Jul-2012 20:59

Mojocrunch: I'm pretty happy with Orcon zero for steam. But that's only because I use Steammanager. During these Steam sales I have downloaded over 98gb for free. There are a bunch more games i need to download that aren't being downloaded when steammanager limits it to the orcon server, so that'll have to come out of my cap, but I'm still happy.

At the end of the day though, Orcon is the worst ISP I have EVER had, and i've only been with them for 2 months. The internet is great. Speeds are great. If you DO connect to the orcon steam server, it never fails to downloaded at less than 1.3mb/s, usually 1.5mb/s.

I rang them yesterday though cause it says I have gone 125gb over my cap. (because the website says my cap is one third of my actual cap) and they said don't worry about it. I told them I do worry about it, and what they are going to do about it. They said that there is nothing they can do about it but that i 'shouldn't' get a bill for a 65gb plan, but for a 200gb plan... after my previous 2 months with them, that hasn't filled me with confidence.

Wait.. So why are Orcon the worst ISP in your experience?

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#660090 22-Jul-2012 21:42

kol:
Mojocrunch: I'm pretty happy with Orcon zero for steam. But that's only because I use Steammanager. During these Steam sales I have downloaded over 98gb for free. There are a bunch more games i need to download that aren't being downloaded when steammanager limits it to the orcon server, so that'll have to come out of my cap, but I'm still happy.

At the end of the day though, Orcon is the worst ISP I have EVER had, and i've only been with them for 2 months. The internet is great. Speeds are great. If you DO connect to the orcon steam server, it never fails to downloaded at less than 1.3mb/s, usually 1.5mb/s.

I rang them yesterday though cause it says I have gone 125gb over my cap. (because the website says my cap is one third of my actual cap) and they said don't worry about it. I told them I do worry about it, and what they are going to do about it. They said that there is nothing they can do about it but that i 'shouldn't' get a bill for a 65gb plan, but for a 200gb plan... after my previous 2 months with them, that hasn't filled me with confidence.

Wait.. So why are Orcon the worst ISP in your experience?

Have a look through the Orcon forum, there is plenty of experiences mentioned there.

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#660102 22-Jul-2012 21:53

networkn:
kol:
Mojocrunch: I'm pretty happy with Orcon zero for steam. But that's only because I use Steammanager. During these Steam sales I have downloaded over 98gb for free. There are a bunch more games i need to download that aren't being downloaded when steammanager limits it to the orcon server, so that'll have to come out of my cap, but I'm still happy.

At the end of the day though, Orcon is the worst ISP I have EVER had, and i've only been with them for 2 months. The internet is great. Speeds are great. If you DO connect to the orcon steam server, it never fails to downloaded at less than 1.3mb/s, usually 1.5mb/s.

I rang them yesterday though cause it says I have gone 125gb over my cap. (because the website says my cap is one third of my actual cap) and they said don't worry about it. I told them I do worry about it, and what they are going to do about it. They said that there is nothing they can do about it but that i 'shouldn't' get a bill for a 65gb plan, but for a 200gb plan... after my previous 2 months with them, that hasn't filled me with confidence.

Wait.. So why are Orcon the worst ISP in your experience?

Have a look through the Orcon forum, there is plenty of experiences mentioned there.

I was referring to Mojocrunch's post, which seemed overly positive about Orcon, yet it was stated they were the worst ISP.

Kyanar

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#660174 23-Jul-2012 01:32

networkn:
THIS! This whole topic could have been solved by THIS.

It's not temperamental though, they should have investigated how it worked and decided based on the fact they wouldn't be able to control the traffic and opted to not provide it.

Orcon as usual put themselves under pressure and leave themselves open to poor feedback and loss of it's reputation by failing to perform proper due diligence.

I don't really agree with this. The ideal solution was to make sure someone wouldn't see "zero rated" until they'd seen the FAQ. They've done this, so everything is really all gravy from here. For what it's worth, I had literally never seen that FAQ before - when they initially went live there was a brief period of time when they were recommending you establish whether you were downloading zero-rated simply by checking the banner. This is no longer the case, but if someone who'd read the initial message but never looked at the FAQ since... well. Those would be pretty rare though, and alas there's no real good way to sort that out except case by case. Then you've got those who don't look at the website, but see the banner saying zero-rated and never think "maybe I should go read the website" (I mean, why would you?) That's all sorted out now with det kindly removing the bit about zero-rating from that banner so now people will just see it as a nice bonus and if they call up asking why they've got lots of uncharged traffic, they can be directed to the FAQ on a positive note rather than a "I got charged lots. Why?" note.

Anyway, for what it's worth, my particular case has been resolved thanks to the relatively swift and very professional efforts of the Orcon team, and they even finally got my broken line sorted too! (Yeah, I'm looking at you Chorus...)

(And now: a completely unrelated piece of trivia. I was playing Fallout 3 over the weekend and wondered why I recognised one of the names of one of the test subjects in Vault 87 - Quentin Reade. Orcon have big names on staff apparently!)

Snackos

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#660940 24-Jul-2012 12:12

Yeah it's a lottery. When I first heard about it, it was great. But too many people are getting burned by this. I'm not sure what they can do about it though. I think possibly just remove the advertising and just have it as a courtesy service that if it works then that's great, but if it doesn't then tough luck.

Mojocrunch

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#661113 24-Jul-2012 16:28

kol:

I was referring to Mojocrunch's post, which seemed overly positive about Orcon, yet it was stated they were the worst ISP.

My positive review was about the free steam content through Orcon, when using steammanger. Because we all know that it's not Orcon that chooses the server you download from, I don't blame them for any shortcomings with it. The only thing they could improve on is a bit more clarity for the people who don't bother to look into things. Not that that's my problem. I'm not completely useless with computers, and am pretty pedantic when it comes to knowing how things so I took a full five minutes of finding out how to work around the problem. Others don't, but I guess that is their problem.

From now on it's off topic from this thread, but to answer the question:

As for what's wrong with Orcon, I have a long, long list of things. I was going to cancel my plan (I chose no contract option, for obvious reasons) by the 5th day of being connected due to the fact, well, I wasn't connected. I rang two times a day to try and get help, and they treated me like an idiot and that it was all my fault. (I'm not a pro, but i'm 3/4 through diploma in IT, and have certificate III, which covers everything I needed to do on my end that could have fixed a problem). Each time I rang, they would say they have put it up to level two and they will contact me with a solution 'hopefully within two weeks'. Because I was already being charged for a service I wasn't getting, I rang up for the second time on the 5th day and said I'm cancelling my contract.

That's when they actually checked and found out that they didn't reconfigure the router before they sent it out (I told them that it's got somebody elses details on it but they said it didn't matter that shouldn't effect it). Pretty much I was telling my friends what the problem was before Orcon knew what the problem was but Orcon paid no attention. (And just so you know, Orcon Genius routers cannot be configured your end, only at Orcons end.) By the end of the day, I was connected.

That's my review of my first 5 days of Orcon.

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