Review of Unlimited Broadband Data Plans

Another article from Canstar Blue reviewing the various Unlimited Broadband Data Plans

http://www.canstarblue.com.au/phone-internet/internet/broadband/unlimited-home-broadband-plans/

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RE ORIGIN BROADBAND

If I could give them a -5 stars I would. They have completely screwed every communication I have had with them up. They are sending me reminders to provide my payment reference number condescendingly a week after I was on the phone with a customer service officer immediately on the day and paid and they took the reference number while I was on the line and fixed the issue. They have been unable to get the phone service I’ve been paying for to work and even though I pay for top plan and top speed the best I ever get is 43 Mb/sec when I should have up to 80 and that 43 Mb speed is in non peak time… at peak time… streaming isn’t always a fun experience. God forbid you have a few devices using it… I often have to revert to 4G. They don’t seem to care, I had two escalations in the system when they suspended my service, even though during the time it was late I was constantly on phone with them trying to get service doing what I’ve paid for. I have demanded they meet their promise or refund me for the difference between the plans for all the months I’ve been paying for a service they cannot provide. All I get are emails sending me a "kindly reminder to provide my payment reference number’ if I want my service unsuspended for a service I’ve paid for is active and I don’t owe any money on (so even though they didn’t fix it I paid the account in other words) but they sure owe me a refund and some compensation. No hurry at their end on that one, apparently. You must jump when they say but they don’t need to really respond or address your issues, that’s how it seems to work. They have no website for customers, no portal at all and honestly I don’t know how they can hold their head up as an ISP provider.

Welcome to the community @mswrightgc

Origin is another company branching out from its core competence. It appears they are well outside their competence zone and you are their victim from the payment and customer service aspect?

As for your speed, you imply you have a 100mbps plan, but reality is some premises are technologically unable to support 100mbps service, and a few cannot support even 50mbps. RSPs such as Origin are not supposed to be selling what is impossible to provide. If that turns out to be the case you should demand refunds from Origin to reflect a 50mbps plan as your reported performance is in that range, although far from the better experiences that mostly vary between 46-52 mbps.

Troubleshooting to find out why your performance is so poor could be interesting. You may do well to start by asking what the maximum that can be physically supplied to your premises is, and then why your performance does not meet it.

I presume you are measuring speed from a hard-wired Ethernet connected computer? If you are measuring from WiFi or from a phone your performance will be limited to how fast the device can network, not necessarily how fast your NBN connection can deliver. If you post your configuration we may be able to offer further advice on that.

In preparation I recommend you peruse the NBN category where you will find a wealth of first person experiences with some of the RSPs, as well as links to Choice advice and the periodic ACCC reports.

You may wish to investigate another provider based on those posts and the linked ACCC reports.

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Thanks PhilT… yes the technician that installed said they would not be able to achieve the speed they sold me. (its up to 80Mb/s peak times). The speeds of average 43-46 Mb/sec is at off peak times. lol… so they aren’t even close.

And yes they are branching out without being ready. And this is the consequence. I was very very nice until they screwed up so much communication and called at all hours. Then on one of my reviews they asked me to email them. I said check your emails you’ll find lots of them already including a summary and what I want.

I have pointed out to them that a lot could have been solved with small tweaks to their SOP and policies, along with communication between departments and team members.

I am going to speed test during day once and at night during peak times and screenshot to attempt to get a refund on the difference based on their plan speeds and costs, of what they sold compared to what they can actually provide.

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Oh the technician didn’t work for origin (well he did but as a contractor), so he was honest with me.

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I have had one or two issues with Internet over the 20+ years (starting with dialup) I’ve used it. The best way to get resolution of any extended problem is to threaten, or actually initiate, handing the problem to the TIO (Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman). To do this, you need good documentation. What the problem is, any communication between user and service provider, any steps toward resolution. The TIO will not do anything unless there is a provable problem, that the issue has been raised with the ISP, enough time has elapsed that the ISP should have acted. Even then they encourage user/ISP resolution rather than they act. In all but one case the threat of the TIO was enough to get action, and in the one case the TIO provided me with an internal contact within the ISP, and a short exchange got the problem fixed.

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