[PikachuMan]

woodyear99, on Sep 29 2007, 08:26 PM, said:

They admitted they didn't have enough bandwidth to service all the customers when i called this week. been calling for the past 3 weeks and they always keep saying they working on it. They told me they putting things in place this weekend, I find that so funny. When tstt come with their new packages even if they slower at least they might be more consistent.

This service goes too slow and is too unreliable for the price I am paying. Have not gotten 6 mbit speeds in a while it is always sub 1 mbit during peak times. Yes I know it is unreasonable to expect 6 mbit speeds at all times but come on it is under 1 mbit most of the time lol, 1 - 6 mbit is a big difference.

I would call it false advertising.

I wouldn't call that unreasonable. They sell their service at a rated speed, and that's what you should be getting. If they know they can't provide that at certain times, they should state that in their advertising.

I wouldn't be too hard on them for this one (ongoing) incident. It's hard to estimate usage patterns, especially in a brand spanking new marketplace. They do have some options for fixing the situation:

(1) Shifting around bandwidth to areas with greatest demand (probably already done).

(2) Buying additional bandwidth from TSTT

(2) Traffic shaping. Bittorrent and P2P traffic could be throttled to free up bandwidth for other stuff.

(3) Setting different "burst" speeds and "sustained" speeds.

(4) Tossing off heavy users. Haven't read FLOW's contract yet, but it might contain an "Acceptable Use Policy" that allows them legal right to do that.

(5) Hard caps on maximum data transfered (in gigabytes) per month.

Though, it's possible they could always just ignore it until November.

[jaiume]

I also think that if they say 2mb it should be 2mb, constantly.

The thing that is getting me more annoyed than anything is the lack of information. If they told me that it was because they ran out of bandwith, and that once they get their ARCOS connection up and running, everything will be back up to speed, I would feel a bit happier. I'd also be happier if they gave me a definative date for this to happen. I also have just had promises of next week, next week.

I also think Flow should give their customers some kind of compensation. I guess they have gotten into the Trini way of doing things already, by effectively telling their customers, that thats the way it is, so suck some salt, we keeping your money, and hard luck for you.

[srnoth]

jaiume, on Sep 29 2007, 10:44 PM, said:

I also think Flow should give their customers some kind of compensation. I guess they have gotten into the Trini way of doing things already, by effectively telling their customers, that thats the way it is, so suck some salt, we keeping your money, and hard luck for you.

Exactly. I don't have a problem with them experiencing difficulties and being unable to deliver the advertised bandwidth, especially while they are still having to buy from TSTT. But if that is the case, and we are not getting the service we are paying for, they should issue automatic refunds, especially for this now ongoing problem. They are expected to have problems at first, but don't expect to get paid for a service that isn't being provided.



By the way folks, I've noticed that if you do a regular download in firefox or IE, you get around 30KBps, but if you use a download program that splits it into multiple streams, you usually get the full ~200KBps, so it seems that they are limiting traffic by individual data streams, and not actually limiting your entire connection. So it still works out better than TSTT.

[Santos]

I don't mind if they get a few problems here and there but when it starts to spread and 3 weeks pass of nothing happening to fix the problem, that's when I get irritated. Anything more than a week is ridiculous.

[woodyear99]

Is anyone here having a positive experience with Flow lately?

[PikachuMan]

srnoth, on Sep 29 2007, 11:04 PM, said:

By the way folks, I've noticed that if you do a regular download in firefox or IE, you get around 30KBps, but if you use a download program that splits it into multiple streams, you usually get the full ~200KBps, so it seems that they are limiting traffic by individual data streams, and not actually limiting your entire connection. So it still works out better than TSTT.

So, I guess that means bittorrent is running fine? I think that could be the reason why the FLOW network having bandwidth issues in the first place.

[Santos]

My internet has been at its worst this weekend so far. It is really awful. Massive lag spikes playing online games, 5 to 10 second lag.

[woodyear99]

Hey try using the internet in the mornings like around 8 am, it works really well then guess it's cuz not that many people online then.

[aka]

PikachuMan, on Sep 29 2007, 10:35 PM, said:

I wouldn't call that unreasonable. They sell their service at a rated speed, and that's what you should be getting. If they know they can't provide that at certain times, they should state that in their advertising. I am sure they either intentionally misled customers or didn't hire the right people.

I wouldn't be too hard on them for this one (ongoing) incident. It's hard to estimate usage patterns, especially in a brand spanking new marketplace. They do have some options for fixing the situation:

I guess that it's very hard to imagine why someone would want to pay $400.00 a month and more for an Internet connection. Maybe the brains at Flow thought customers wanted their Yahoo home page to load half a second faster.

(1) Shifting around bandwidth to areas with greatest demand (probably already done). Not done in St. Augustine but I am still paying my bill - something overlooked by Flow.

(2) Buying additional bandwidth from TSTT - Who cares and they should just get it.

(2) Traffic shaping. Bittorrent and P2P traffic could be throttled to free up bandwidth for other stuff. ???

(3) Setting different "burst" speeds and "sustained" speeds. ???

(4) Tossing off heavy users. Haven't read FLOW's contract yet, but it might contain an "Acceptable Use Policy" that allows them legal right to do that. What COntract - Did anyone sign a contract or was it done over the phone? There is no contract and if there was there should be a minimum standard of performance for Flow (which they will avoid at all cost because nonperformance is Flow's thing). If there ever is a contract it must be fair to both Flow and the customer and I doubt Flow would ever want to be fair to the customer.

(5) Hard caps on maximum data transfered (in gigabytes) per month. Too late for that because expectation is already high and TSTT is waiting for Flow to slip; and they already have.

Though, it's possible they could always just ignore it until November.

http://www.speedtest...t/188755210.png

FLOW SUCKS MORE THAN TSTT - SAD TO SAY

[woodyear99]

Lol......aka....another satisfied Flow customer

[PikachuMan]

Guess I should explain these more:

Traffic shaping. Bittorrent and P2P traffic could be throttled to free up bandwidth for other stuff.

>Basically, they would detect bandwidth heavy apps (like bit torrent or Limewire and such), and slow down the speed available to them. That frees up bandwidth for casual users.

Setting different "burst" speeds and "sustained" speeds.

>They would have the first few megabytes download at, say, 2Mb/s, but after that, it slows down to say 1Mb/s. That will at least give you full bandwidth for webpages and small files, but the large network-congesting downloads are limited.

There is a contract, actually:

http://www.flowtrini...44F21896E249CCA

Says nothing about "acceptable use", and the refund policy is pretty vague.

[aka]

Traffic shaping, burst speeds and sustained speeds make sense. I just thought that Flow should have planned this out before, rather than wait for a crisis to develop and their reputation tarnished even more.

Flow is proving to customer they lack the technical competence to provide customers with what they pay for. Everything seems hit-and-miss with them - mostly missing it seems.

I signed up by phone so a contract on their website is useless to me but it may be useful for the few more customers they may get. I think people should read the contract very carefully since Flow doesn't appear to be a company anyone could trust.

[samureye]

You know, if their internet service was a better value and more reliable, I could dump the # TV service and just download the shows I want.

[Santos]

I think the bandwidth meters are lieing to us. The TSTT one is reading 2MB and Speedtest is reading 600kbps while CNET reads 100kbps and less. My internet is still horrible, anyone understand why those readings are like that? I would like to know what reliable bandwidth test is really a reliable reading.

[dforge]

Santos, on Sep 30 2007, 06:29 PM, said:

I think the bandwidth meters are lieing to us. The TSTT one is reading 2MB and Speedtest is reading 600kbps while CNET reads 100kbps and less. My internet is still horrible, anyone understand why those readings are like that? I would like to know what reliable bandwidth test is really a reliable reading.

Seems that TSTT may be the problem there. Its probably bandwidth from TSTT that's why the readings from TSTT are so great..