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After being a loyal customer to an ISP/Comms Co. for many years now,
I'm about to get another provider for phone and data services, because
they have removed their Newsgroups/USENET/NNTP facility for their
customers and have demonstrated extremely poor judgement in my view
resulting in yet another example of their blatent disregard and
contempt for the very people that pay them. I wondered if anyone could
please comment on the following items:

1. Has anyone heard anything about Slingshot possibly removing their
newsgroup server(s)/service?

2. Has anyone had any bad experiences with Slingshot? In particular I'm
looking at their broadband service.

3. I am also interested in any exceptionally good, and exceptionally
bad reports of service, customer service by Slingshot, and what have
you. Does anyone have any comment here?

Thanks...

"HêlênsKï KlärK" <> wrote in message
news: oups.com...
> After being a loyal customer to an ISP/Comms Co. for many years now,
> I'm about to get another provider for phone and data services, because
> they have removed their Newsgroups/USENET/NNTP facility for their
> customers and have demonstrated extremely poor judgement in my view
> resulting in yet another example of their blatent disregard and
> contempt for the very people that pay them. I wondered if anyone could
> please comment on the following items:
>
> 1. Has anyone heard anything about Slingshot possibly removing their
> newsgroup server(s)/service?
>
> 2. Has anyone had any bad experiences with Slingshot? In particular I'm
> looking at their broadband service.
>
> 3. I am also interested in any exceptionally good, and exceptionally
> bad reports of service, customer service by Slingshot, and what have
> you. Does anyone have any comment here?
>
> Thanks...

Slingshot gets it's newsgroup service from ihug - which causes delays in
posts.
Slingshot isn't a big enough player to provide a decent newsgroup service
all of it's own.

E. Scrooge

> Slingshot gets it's newsgroup service from ihug - which causes delays in
> posts.
> Slingshot isn't a big enough player to provide a decent newsgroup service
> all of it's own.

Unfortunately Ihug screwed it up big time for me, as I think they did
for alot of others in the past for me too, and I'm hesitant to go back
there. A few years ago they made a major stupid move by capping their
Ultra, and it annoyed alot of people. To add to the annoyance, their
customer service left alot to be desired.

Thanks for that though. Appreciate the feedback.

HêlênsKï KlärK wrote:
> 2. Has anyone had any bad experiences with Slingshot? In particular I'm
> looking at their broadband service.

I switched from Orcon to Slingshot 2 or 3 months ago because their data
charges are cheaper. I have found that performance during peak hours
can be really bad, though I don't know if this has anything to do with
Slingshot or whether it affects all ISPs (I don't remember having the
same problem with Orcon but that was before the 2 mbps to 3 mbps
upgrade so it's hard to compare).

I also find that I sometimes lose my connection and have to reset my
router. Seems to happen once every few days, which is pretty annoying.

> 3. I am also interested in any exceptionally good, and exceptionally
> bad reports of service, customer service by Slingshot, and what have
> you. Does anyone have any comment here?

Their telephone support seems reasonable, though I'm not impressed with
their online support. I submitted a couple of issues relating to
performance on their web site and received no reply to either!

But as I said, my main reason for switching to them was their data
rates. They charge around $1/gb when you go over your cap, whereas last
time I checked Orcon charged around $5/gb.

> 3. I am also interested in any exceptionally good, and exceptionally
> bad reports of service, customer service by Slingshot, and what have
> you. Does anyone have any comment here?
>
> Thanks...

I'll say it again, if you want dsl and a decent news server go to
WorldXchange (http://xnet.co.nz/internet/broadband.shtml)

HêlênsKï KlärK wrote:
>> Slingshot gets it's newsgroup service from ihug - which causes delays in
>> posts.
>> Slingshot isn't a big enough player to provide a decent newsgroup service
>> all of it's own.
>
> Unfortunately Ihug screwed it up big time for me, as I think they did
> for alot of others in the past for me too, and I'm hesitant to go back
> there. A few years ago they made a major stupid move by capping their
> Ultra, and it annoyed alot of people. To add to the annoyance, their
> customer service left alot to be desired.

Would you consider Orcon? I moved to them from Xtra for exactly the same
reasons, after getting a commitment from them that offering an nntp server was
considered a core component of the service offered.

Crash

> But as I said, my main reason for switching to them was their data
> rates. They charge around $1/gb when you go over your cap, whereas last
> time I checked Orcon charged around $5/gb.

Orcon was the first company to introduce the idea of $10/10GB ($1/GB).
Slinshot then followed us.

We were essentially forced to increase our overage pricing when Telecom
lowered the aggregate data allowance per user from 10GB to 4GB per
user. If users do over 4GB average then we run into problems.

Therefore we did the modeling and decided that the best price we could
set overage at was $10/5GB (i.e. $2/GB NOT $5/GB)

Cheers
Seeby

In article <newscache$jnfv0j$edb$>,
says...
>
> > 3. I am also interested in any exceptionally good, and exceptionally
> > bad reports of service, customer service by Slingshot, and what have
> > you. Does anyone have any comment here?
> >
> > Thanks...
>
> I'll say it again, if you want dsl and a decent news server go to
> WorldXchange (http://xnet.co.nz/internet/broadband.shtml)

They must have improved - or you're one person that's found 'em good.
How would you rate their reliability (connection dropouts etc)?, and
service?

I have a mate that left 'em pretty quick - so his experience has been
different from yours, presumably.

--
Duncan

"HêlênsKï KlärK" <> wrote in message
news: oups.com...
> After being a loyal customer to an ISP/Comms Co. for many years now,
> I'm about to get another provider for phone and data services, because
> they have removed their Newsgroups/USENET/NNTP facility for their
> customers and have demonstrated extremely poor judgement in my view
> resulting in yet another example of their blatent disregard and
> contempt for the very people that pay them. I wondered if anyone could
> please comment on the following items:
>
> 1. Has anyone heard anything about Slingshot possibly removing their
> newsgroup server(s)/service?
>
> 2. Has anyone had any bad experiences with Slingshot? In particular I'm
> looking at their broadband service.
>
> 3. I am also interested in any exceptionally good, and exceptionally
> bad reports of service, customer service by Slingshot, and what have
> you. Does anyone have any comment here?
>
> Thanks...
>

I switched to slingshots broadband plan about a month ago, and have found it
ok. There have been 2 outages amounting to about 24 hours of downtime, but
apparently it was an issue that affected all broadband providers. I also
find that sometime I have to reset my router as the ADSL gets reset which is
rather annoying.

The major thing that lets slingshot down, is that they don't update the
status page on their website, so you don't know if a problem is at their end
on not. When they have or have had outages, their status page report 'no
known problem'. I told them this, and apparently they are looking into it.
Really there is no excuse for Slingshot not to update their status page, or
why do they bother having it. Perhaps Annette should look into managing her
own company properly before investigating becoming Telecoms CEO, as I
wouldn't have much faith in her as Telecoms boss.

> Would you consider Orcon? I moved to them from Xtra for exactly the same
> reasons, after getting a commitment from them that offering an nntp server was
> considered a core component of the service offered.

Oh really? TelstraClear was difficult to get anything from but agreed
it was an important service but could not/would not commit to any
guarantee. Same with Slingshot but much better customer service.

Did Orcon offer to put that in writing?

Basically it would be good to get it in writing to say "yes you are
paying for it" and yes, we will keep it going for another 10 years min
sort of thing. If you get my drift.