Now that I am an ex-Nextgenus customer...

[DarkJester]

... although I stopped using the service weeks ago l was still wrangling over my exit from them due to the change in the FUP. They originally claimed that the "free" install must be paid for and that I had to give more notice etc. All this fell by the wayside of course when they actually looked at their own T&C/contract etc backed up with the threat of small claims action. They dressed it up of course in the usual face-saving (for them) gestures of "goodwill" towards me.

Well the (un)install team came around on Saturday (much earlier in the day than expected) and gave me a cash refund for the balance of my account. very nice and polite guys but never been good at remembering Asian names so cannot remember them. They did not seem to be particularly well informed by head office and I got the impression that they had cash because they had done earlier installs that day.

They were extremely professional, despite having a triple extension ladder they were not able to recover the nano from my pole as it was too high, installation by a different team had involved health and safety defying spiderman antics. As I had already received permission from Nextgenus to remove the cable already they took the PSU and gave me the cash and I had to tell them how much it was!, I let them off with the .16pence   Apparently Mark will get in touch regarding the nano.

What can I say about Nextgenus that has not already been posted? Well not much really, most of it is in other threads but I would re-iterate thus;

They have no procedures for things that they have not done before. They had no idea about how to deal with my cancellation, it took a meeting before they would decide to give me a refund. I certainly got the impression the install team had not done a removal before.

They are not really an ISP are they? I could provide the same service to you guys by pointing a nano at yours and sharing my internet connection with you. An ISP has many more services in place which Nextgenus does not have. The lack of a user accessible bandwidth meter is unforgivable especially now such savage usage caps in place. Anyone got a promised IP address yet? Even a temporary one? - Anyone?

Adding more bandwidth is not really going to solve any problems long or even medium term is it? In fact unless they sort out the load balancing its doubtful that adding more bandwidth will even resolve everyone's problems in the short term.

I went with NextGenus for the speed (despite getting 14mb+ from Karoo) and the fact that they were offering an alternative to Karoo. I suspect that that the majority of their customer base are with them for the same reasons, however I believe that Nextgenus (and other wireless providers in Hull) is too late to a party that will end when KC get their act together and provide at least FTTC. If/(when?) KC get fiber rolled out across the city I would imagine that the speeds will tempt the majority of customers back, certainly enough to reach a tipping point where they do not have enough customers to simultaneously provide a comparable service at a favorable price point.

Its not just technical either. Customer service with Nextgenus seems to be hit and miss. I have spoken to and met Nextgenus staff who are polite and helpful, however the overwhelming experience I have received from them remains very negative due to being openly and publicly insulted and accused of being a criminal due to my internet usage. The lack of actual knowledge of the data protection act by certain individuals is nothing short of amazing.

It was once posted by a Nextgenus employee on Facebook that they will not miss me, well I shall not miss you either.

[Hígh Treason]

I remember saying all of this before hardly anyone had even signed up with any of the wireless providers, I also porvided evidence that Simon (NGU) and Ricky (Airnet) were incompetent and unprofessional, but all that happened was everyone kicked off and I was accused of trolling - eventually, I did start trolling, I've since stopped after the third ban.

Everybody here should know I go out of my way to be pleasent, and as a result, I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. Next time, maybe people will listen to ICT Practitioners with experience and knowledge in this field instead of assuming that they know better.


Edit: Awaits another ban for speaking the unpleasent truth about the beloved NextGenus...

[DarkJester]

  I did do "some" research but not enough, perhaps if your posts had been left alone I could have read them.

[bobthebuilder]

i see a few  next customers don't post on here anymore. also i   tried joing the user group on facebook but had no luck lol.

end off the day i think they are cowboys.

[ramtops]

We are still with them, but I suspect they don't want us. Their support is a laugh, and their new supposedly "customer only" Facebook still displays the same problems, with staff being rude to customers, off topic posts (a very nasty sexist joke there yesterday, which I asked to have removed, and was told to "chill out"). We are still seeing several disconnects a day; gamers who complain about this are soothed, but because we use the net for business, I am told that we should get a leased line.

We do have a fixed IP. 

My feeling is that they have neither the technical nor the business skills to make a success of the business. The speeds seem to fluctuate all the time, and we very rarely get the throughput we had in the first place. They could put in a radius server today and solve the user issues - I cannot believe that there is no proper metering available! Their customer facing representatives are doing real harm to the business, particularly the one posting as Nextgenus Sales, who constantly puts up favourable speed tests despite knowing that a great many customers don't get anything like those speeds, and despite NGU asking people *not* to post them.

Not sure how long they can last, really - they're clearly still signing up customers, but they can't service them ...

[Djwindas]

all this is sounding all too familiar.    well what can i say guys we do have a choice now although it may not be the right one. lets see what the future holds for kapoo. and this fibre.

[David]

What was wrong with SureBroadband?  nobody mentions them much???

[Hígh Treason]

SureBroadband, against all odds, seems to have done quite well, they do at least appear to care about their customers and although some minor mistakes were made, they were only made because they actually put the effort in - as a young business some room can be allowed for such things - they also fixed these minor errors reasonably fast if I remember correctly.

Still not my cup of tea though simply because I don't like using anything that has the word "Wireless" on it.

[bobthebuilder]

o well everyone jump ship and then let see how long they will last

[David]

SureBroadband, against all odds, seems to have done quite well, they do at least appear to care about their customers and although some minor mistakes were made, they were only made because they actually put the effort in - as a young business some room can be allowed for such things - they also fixed these minor errors reasonably fast if I remember correctly.

Still not my cup of tea though simply because I don't like using anything that has the word "Wireless" on it.

True, but i thought the people who were leaving NextGenus didn't like them because of their hostile relations to customers, and their bad attitude problem, as well as the new FUP.

On saying that, Karoo was hated, which caused people to leave them in the first place, so i'm surprised that noone acknowledges there still is a good (wireless) alternative (for now), rather than the 2 evils (KC & NextGenus)

[ramtops]

True, but i thought the people who were leaving NextGenus didn't like them because of their hostile relations to customers, and their bad attitude problem, as well as the new FUP.

On saying that, Karoo was hated, which caused people to leave them in the first place, so i'm surprised that noone acknowledges there still is a good (wireless) alternative (for now), rather than the 2 evils (KC & NextGenus)

Sure don't offer service here off Princes Ave, and I'm not sure about Airnet. The rolling contract for NGU appealed to us, as well.

[GarethG]

I will add my experience as a NGU customer, it's not all bad... but I do agree with some areas of the posts.

I was originally installed I believe in the beginning of this year. But we found the connection to be very unstable, by that I mean upload/download was <10MB and there were alot of CCQ errors causing alot of drop outs and very slow buffering times. After this I was given options;

A: Have it uninstalled and then try again another time once network expansions happened (No timefame so how long is a piece of string?).
B: Keep it installed but don't pay any monthly fee except for the £150 installation fee, with the only consequence of not using the connection much (couldn't anyway with the errors) and also not posting speed tests (Hence why you haven't seen any posts from me).

I think most people would have done the same and chose option B, not to mention I already jumped the gun and cancled my Karoo contract before even having the NGU tested/installed.

Anyway after that it was a waiting game for a new AP to be installed that I could connect to, getting around the pesky trees slowing my connection down. But as I mentioned above there was no time frame for this so it may not ever have happened. I eventually got bored of not been able to use my connection so I decided to get a pole fitted, we didn't get it fitted originally because we thought it would be like putting a wind turbine in our back yard (An eyesore). So a 12foot pole was fitted on Saturday (A good 2 hours earlier than expected and without notice!) and I now have a good connection, not quite what some other people in my area are getting but its alot better than my former Karoo connection. I will be posting some speed/ping tests in the comming weeks. All that is left for me to do is set up a direct debit.

So from the story above I would conclude I have had a pleasant time with NGU so far!


The bits I agree on from other posts are as follows:

• They do seem to have a lack of procedures, especially in the paperwork areas. (They seem like a company that was made in a hurry to beat the other providers and skipping important parts of the making process). They also told me they expanded 3 times faster than what was expected, to me suggests there were no contingency planning (again suggesting rushed).

• I have whitnessed some staff and/or people who seem like staff (but aren't!) been very disrespectful to thier community. This is inexcusable for any company and should be delt with. However I don't think I know any other company who run a support page on a social networking site, personally I don't like the idea. I think all problems should be kept confidential, not to mention it's quite damaging to the company. As a neutral that's interested in getting a NGU connection, I would first research the company I know nothing about. To go on facebook just to see a page full of; insults, negative feedback, poor connections, arguments etc. That would put me right off!

• I personally think a 5GB daily limit in this day and age is too low, I don't know how much it is costing them to buy bandwidth so I can't comment further. I presume the UK bandwidth costs quite alot still. But as DJ mentioned, people go to NGU for speed, but once you go over this limit the caps are so severe you can barely do more than browse a website. But then again that what a limit is for, once you go over you are costing the company more money for bandwidth and you pay nothing extra with NGU.

• Again with the usage limit, DJ mentioned no bandwidth monitor. So you will never know if you're nearing the limit or gone over untill its too late. This seems like another one of the rushed things that was overlooked and should have been there from the start. They had problems with their website designer/coder having other priorities so that could be one of the reasons. However I know this will be implemented in the future, but you can see the problem.

All the above points seem very negative but most, if not all of them are been ironed out as the company matures. I think the main problems lie within the lack of staffing and/or trained/experienced staff and the company backbone such as FUP, personaly customer logins (bandwidth monitor, account controlls etc).

Also I heared whispers of NGU providing a FTTH service in the future, no idea how long that will take though. I am assuming it will run on the KC's network with NGU providing the last mile.

[Hígh Treason]

...After this I was given options;

A: Have it uninstalled and then try again another time once network expansions happened (No timefame so how long is a piece of string?).
B: Keep it installed but don't pay any monthly fee except for the £150 installation fee, with the only consequence of not using the connection much (couldn't anyway with the errors) and also not posting speed tests (Hence why you haven't seen any posts from me).

Wait? What? NextGen told you not to post speedtests? I'd have posted more, and if this was in a written contract it seems very fishy to me, then again, I already suspect them of tampering with the MTU on their equipment which would invalidate any and all speedtests.

They had problems with their website designer/coder having other priorities so that could be one of the reasons. However I know this will be implemented in the future, but you can see the problem.

Wasn't RichardMyres supposed to be making their site? He might have said that one in chat, might rummage around in the archives, it's all your fault RichardMyres!

I offered to code their website for free, but was rejected (rather rudely if I remember correctly), oh well, sucks to be NextGen.

[richardmyers]

...After this I was given options;

A: Have it uninstalled and then try again another time once network expansions happened (No timefame so how long is a piece of string?).
B: Keep it installed but don't pay any monthly fee except for the £150 installation fee, with the only consequence of not using the connection much (couldn't anyway with the errors) and also not posting speed tests (Hence why you haven't seen any posts from me).

Wait? What? NextGen told you not to post speedtests? I'd have posted more, and if this was in a written contract it seems very fishy to me, then again, I already suspect them of tampering with the MTU on their equipment which would invalidate any and all speedtests.

They had problems with their website designer/coder having other priorities so that could be one of the reasons. However I know this will be implemented in the future, but you can see the problem.

Wasn't RichardMyres supposed to be making their site? He might have said that one in chat, might rummage around in the archives, it's all your fault RichardMyres!

I offered to code their website for free, but was rejected (rather rudely if I remember correctly), oh well, sucks to be NextGen.

They got their website from me, free of charge. I have never been asked to create/code a bandwidth monitor, I think this is something they would hire a web developer for. They advertised for one not so long ago on their FB page.

[GarethG]

There wasn't any paperwork when I had mine installed, I was under the impression there wasn't any at all back then? But it was more of a gentlemans agreement between me and NGU that I wasn't to use the connection much or post speedtests as it would be damaging to the company since we knew the connection was poor. So in goodwill we both gave each other something, granted I walked away with a much better bargain than NGU. I couldn't have asked for more, but just remember the connection was very poor. So if anyone was in a similar boat and didn't get the same options as I just keep that in mind

No it wasn't Rich I was referring to regarding the website, didn't know you did their current site though! I believe originally they have/had a different coder based in America.