Anyone here work for slingshot?

[Buyasta]

yeah we always try rebooting router...unplug everything in house....talk to slingshot [usless proposition] the speed test I ran this morning first this results were:

Last Result:
Download Speed: 45 kbps (5.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 169 kbps (21.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 33 ms
Jitter: 0 ms
Packet Loss: 0 %

and that was on slingshots own speed test...and now its running at 1.02mbps for the first time in about a month...it used to be 2.5mbps??

Are you on the All You Can Eat plan?.. If so, your traffic will be shaped even more heavily than normal.

I find that pretty much all NZ ISPs will shape your traffic, whether they admit to it or not - back before I got sick of $500+ internet bills each month, and being billed for about twice the traffic I was actually using, I was on Telstra 25mbit cable, and while I could get up to about 3MB/s from some websites, about 90% of my traffic is from my dedicated server, which has a full duplex 100mbit connection, so it can sustain 12.5MB/s up and down simultaneously.. after about a month all my traffic from that server mysteriously slowed right down to about 0.8 to 1MB/s, and then when I switched to Slingshot, I had the same thing happen - it went from being able to saturate my connection to using about half my bandwidth at most.

[cowpoos]

Are you on the All You Can Eat plan?.. If so, your traffic will be shaped even more heavily than normal.

I find that pretty much all NZ ISPs will shape your traffic, whether they admit to it or not - back before I got sick of $500+ internet bills each month, and being billed for about twice the traffic I was actually using, I was on Telstra 25mbit cable, and while I could get up to about 3MB/s from some websites, about 90% of my traffic is from my dedicated server, which has a full duplex 100mbit connection, so it can sustain 12.5MB/s up and down simultaneously.. after about a month all my traffic from that server mysteriously slowed right down to about 0.8 to 1MB/s, and then when I switched to Slingshot, I had the same thing happen - it went from being able to saturate my connection to using about half my bandwidth at most.

I'm on a 15 gb plan...fullspeed up and down. the exchange is less that a KM away and its right outside a school [big school...te aute college] and we are rural...so bugger all people on the exchange [like 15 houses in a 5km radius]...we never get close to our limit...usually around 6-7 GB and last month 1.7gb because its been soooooo slow!!!!

I think slingshot are useless!!

[Buyasta]

I think slingshot are useless!!

No argument here, I've had a bloody awful experience with them.

I've been with them about 7 months, and our connection has been rooted from day one - once every day or two, the line becomes unstable as hell, and the connection either drops and reconnects at less than 0.5mbit, or it starts getting roughly 50% downstream packet corruption. When this happens, the phone also becomes unusable because there's so much background noise on the line you can't hear the person on the other end.
It can be fixed by unplugging everything from the wall for a few seconds and then plugging back in, but chances are if you try to use the phone, it'll happen again straight off.

I've called Slingshot about it soo many times, and at various times been told that until my connection drops more than 8 times a day, they won't even run a line test, a coupla times they've said they'd look into it, and once they claimed to have sent a tech to my cabinet and told me they'd fixed the problem.

Since the three main candidates are a buggered port on the DSLAM at my cabinet, a screwed up line, and issues with my house wiring, I asked them to send a tech to my house to install a central splitter about 5 months ago to remove one of the possibilities, and have still heard nothing back.

My flatmate has a friend who works there, and he has been able to give me a refund of my monthly bill once or twice, but even he has been unable to get the technical department to actually do anything about it.

Add in the ridiculously long wait times to even get fobbed off with lame platitudes or excused by tech support, and I've pretty much given up trying to get it fixed - once I've got some money I'm going to get an electrician in to install a central splitter and run a new clean line from the splitter to my modem, and aside from that all I can do is hope like hell the problem is with the DSLAM, and it'll be resolved when they upgrade my cabinet to ADSL2+ in June.

Annoyingly enough, back when I thought they were actually going to fix my problem, I recommended them to my brother and to a friend.. My brother has had entirely trouble-free internet, while my friend has had no problems whatsoever, and consistently got damn near his lines theoretical maximum speed... Pretty much seems like if you're fortunate enough not to need their support department, they're not too bad, but god help you if you do.

[Gremlin]

Pretty much seems like if you're fortunate enough not to need their support department, they're not too bad, but god help you if you do.

A key metric. If sales is slack at getting back to you, its a warning sign. Tech support will usually be even worse.

[imdying]

because we used to get 2.5 mbps now I get .03mbps [for last 4 weeks-ish] and can't download a full youtube video without being bumped. and after blaming our router and gear a well qualified geek came around and within 5mins said your bandwidth is being throttled by the company...and they say no no...we would never do that...

They most definitely do that. I have a friend who is considering going back to Telecom. He was on 14Mb/s, and now is on 2.5Mb/s, the only change being slingshot.

They definitely throttle their bandwidth.

[cowpoos]

They most definitely do that. I have a friend who is considering going back to Telecom. He was on 14Mb/s, and now is on 2.5Mb/s, the only change being slingshot.

They definitely throttle their bandwidth.

Yes...we're moving to telecom. I will pay a few bucks more for service.
I must admit....Orcon is very tempting!!

[martybabe]

I think slingshot are useless!!

I don't understand most of this thread but lord knows I agree with that bit, they are worse than bloody useless!

My interweb is crawling along, are we saying unplug all the phone sockets for 15 minutes and I might get some band width back??

[porky]

I don't understand most of this thread but lord knows I agree with that bit, they are worse than bloody useless!

My interweb is crawling along, are we saying unplug all the phone sockets for 15 minutes and I might get some band width back??

Im with you on the above. I too are with slingshot and would like to slingshot them off the nearest cliff. Thanks to all those that have put up the tech stuff. Was thinking i had some duff gear, but couldnt work out why some days it was all good and some no connection at all. I have threatened to opt out of my contract as they promised me better service and price than telecom. I havent seen either. And have yet to get a reply back. The bit that pisses me off the most is that they wanked on about being the totally NZ owned etc etc. and thats one of the reasons for changing.

[bogan]

Pretty much seems like if you're fortunate enough not to need their support department, they're not too bad, but god help you if you do.

Excellent summary, for those with them its worth remembering if it's a complete failure of service you can get a refund.