Honesty Box NBN Scheme, is it legit or a scam

In early July this year I received an invitation from Choice to be considered to have a device fitted to my modem to measure the performance of the NBN.
The company in partnership with Choice is called “Honesty Box” and I provided my details to them in an application to have the device connected. To date I have heard nothing from them, despite them saying they would advise me whether or not I have been selected, and am left wondering if they aren’t scammers. I have also written to them and am yet to receive a reply. While it may be a coincidence, I have noticed that spam into my Hotmail email account, has more than trebled since I gave them my email address.
I would like to know if any other Choice members have actually received the devices, and if so what results have been gathered to date.
I live in a rural town in Central Victoria, population 7,500 and wondered because of my location Honesty Box are not interested in data from such a relatively small town. After all the NBN survey should be about “National” broadband performance, and not CBD or regional-centric data only.

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No - not a scam - they sent me one and I get regular reports. Not sure how accurate or representative they are though, the selection of things they hit to test are interesting :wink:

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They are not scammers, they do provide info to CHOICE, CHOICE do publish the results, if you are selected you do get a device. They may not select a household for various reasons but most get accepted. They run the survey on behalf of CHOICE. Those who also get accepted to the beta test of Individual results get an email once a month with their household results as an attached pdf.

To see some individual results see the following topic on this site (you will need to scroll through some stuff):

The Broadband Performance results that come from the Honesty Box data is:

PM me and if you provide an email address I will happily forward a copy of my Individual results for you to look through.

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Many thanks for your very prompt response. It has put my mind to rest.

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Hi Graroll. Many thanks to you too for your prompt & helpful response. Much appreciated.
Thanks for your kind offer, I would be interested in perusing your data. How do I “PM” you to provide you with my email address?

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You should have a message from me now, you will see a green number above your user icon at the top of your page. Just reply to the message when you are ready.

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Yeah, for me (last year) there was 4 1/2 months between my application submission/acknowledgement & the rejection response. Doesn’t inspire confidence.

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Having read your response I don’t feel so bad now in thinking they were scammers.
I must admit that my built-in BS meter was in overdrive when I saw the company was called Honesty Box. :roll_eyes:
I actually looked them up in the ABN/ACN register, and yes they are legit.
Not very professional if you ask me. How long would it take to determine if you are eligible or not?

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They went through a name change some time ago. eMetric was the previous name anyway here is the parent website link:

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I applied (regional South Australia) - not interested in a fixed wireless connection…

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Thanks Graham. Just yesterday I received an email from Honesty Box, to advise that the device is on its way to me. This must be as a result of me asking them when they will be in a position to determine if I am or not. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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I’ve had my Honesty Box for a couple of months, the first report wasnt available because somehow it dropped off the network. The second report didnt really tell me anything I didnt already know… not sure of its value to the individual. Do providers get reports too?

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Yes Sue, it is interesting what you say, as while I haven’t received the Honesty Box device yet, I have come to the same conclusion, as I have had an opportunity to see another Choice Community member’s NBN test results. From time to time I check my upload and download speed from various providers, as well as checking the ping.
I have been very fortunate that I don’t get any dropouts, as some others seem to get, and am very happy with the up and down speeds I get.

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I use mine to talk to my RSP when I have had issues particularly with poor peak service, CVC seems the issue and my uploads are very spotty (as you can see) which we are currently working through with my RSP on that issue. I guess individually it is just interest for many and really the program isn’t so much about the individual but about getting enough in each group of types of plans and providers to give accurate performance details. CHOICE getting these results can see if problems are occurring with particular providers and also by providing the info can help consumers find the best product/s to suit their needs.

The providers I have no idea if they get reports but they can certainly see where they sit in that regard by checking the CHOICE site.

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I have looked at the various information pages on the Choice site but there are some questions that I cannot find an answer to.

  • How is the allocation of honesty boxes done to remove selection bias, that is to accurately sample the population of NBN users in a representative way?

  • Given the fairly small sample of users what are the confidence intervals for the reported performance figures?

Can anybody help me here?

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I can only suggest on both that you write to/email the company and ask for an answer to your queries. Whenever I have contacted them they have replied reasonably quickly (day or two) and addressed my queries.

As for numbers it isn’t that far different to the ACCC first year where they expected about 2,000 households but they are increasing to around 4,000 but this is what ACCC say currently “which consists of hundreds of volunteers around the country who host a Whitebox on their broadband connection”.

The Honesty Box one starts at around 1,500 and may be expanded to 3,000 (possibly to include ADSL & Cable as well). CHOICE as they are paying for the testing may be able to provide more detail as to whether they will expand the testing, if it will run for longer than the announced 36 months, and what statistical certainty they have on results. I know that at least once data had to be adjusted because of outliers in the results as can be read about in the “Has any actual NBN customer speed data been published?” topic.

To contact Honesty Box you can write to them at

Suite 1, 79 Myrtle St
Chippendale, NSW, 2010
Australia

or email them at

helpdesk@honestybox.com.au (as per their email address in the program’s pdf document)

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A post was merged into an existing topic: 0279812755 : Another Telstra impostor

We only have Fixed Wireless and have had a monitoring device from Honesty Box (formerly eMetric) since March 2018. Now getting regular individual results showing that:
‘Your Internet is better than 4.6% of other Australians on nbn™FIXEDWIRELESS(FW)25/5’ :sob:

Not sure I really wanted to know that!!

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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Has any actual NBN customer speed data been published?

Thanks for the reassurance Sue - much appreciated

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