[plug] [OT] iiNet, ADSL, & Westnet

[Bret Busby]

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Trevor Phillips wrote:

> 
> It seems iiNet is coming out with some VERY attractive ADSL deals:
>    http://www.iinet.net.au/products/home/bliink/updates/bliink.html
> (Is this to do with their roll-out of their own network, or are there other 
> forces at work here?)
> 
> However, I'm a fan of Westnet (whilst never being a customer of them yet ^_^).
> 
> Has anyone heard any goss about Westnet bringing out comparable plans to 
> iiNet?
> 
> Is iiNet really that bad / Westnet really that good? ^_^
> 
> 

We were thinking of switching to Westnet a while ago, to switch to ADSL, 
but decided it was too expensive, and their attitude was not friendly.

Part of the "too expensive", included the high costs that Westnet charge 
for a combination of domain name hosting and email aliasing. When I 
contacted Westnet about this, and they asked for, and got, details of 
the fees that we have been charged for this, by our current ISP, and 
Westnet's response was "Who cares what anyone else charges - we are the 
greatest, and no-one provides a service anywhere as good as ours, so, 
take it or leave it - we don't care".

So, with a response like that, we decided to stay with our current 
dialup, ISP service, and, we have generally been getting connect times 
of around 4-5 days, and the download speed that we have, appears 
adequate for us, for what we get charged, so Westnet can keep their ADSL 
until they have a policy change, and an attitude change.

Oh, and we quit iinet, some time ago (a couple of years, I think) after 
a significant run-in with them, and a stroppy manager there, after a 
long period of problems with emails, with emails taking longer to get 
from one of their servers to another (three days), and, to get out here 
from Perth, than it took to walk the distance. Of course, they said that 
there was no problem with any of their email service, even though, on 
the whole, it was quicker to receive letters via the post, than to 
receive emails at iinet, at that time. And they used different time 
zones, on their different mail servers, to really confuse the issue, 
using UTC and other timezones, rather than the local timezone,  and, 
the times on their servers were not synchronised, so that a message 
would go from one server to another, and arrive some time before it 
was sent, so they could hide what was going on. And, at that time, our 
cat could provide better technical support, than their technical 
support. And, I think that our cat knew more about computers, than them.

-- 
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
 you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
  Chapter 28 of 
  "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
  A Trilogy In Four Parts",
  written by Douglas Adams, 
  published by Pan Books, 1992 
....................................................