Axe starts to swing at TransACT

lucym said :

I am a Transact customer and was an iinet customer. I left iinet because their transact plans were not shaped and a couple of times I got enormous bills for excess usage (teenager in the house).

Iinet reversed the bills after I pointed out the misleading information on their website (which said their plans were shaped) and the second time after I was able to prove that their advertised warning system didn’t send any warnings to me. It wasn’t worth the risk of a third enormous bill so I moved to grapevine which has shaped plans for transact.

it will be interesting to see if iinet have shaped plans for transact customers in the future. I just made a quick check of their website and it still says
All iiNet broadband plans come with:
….No excess quota usage charges (we use shaping instead!)……

That is what it said when I got my first enormous bill. Worth checking before you switch if you are a transact customer!

I am also annoyed that although I am less than 800 metres from an exchange, apparently transact is the only available service for me (other than wireless).

Take the wireless option.

watto23 said :

I was a big fan of Transact, until they didn’t run cable past my house after telling me it was coming and then when they tried to trick me into signing over my home and mobile phones to them, to be a priority user when the transact cable was installed. Nearly 10 years later no cable, dodgy Telstra priced services. Yep no competition in my suburb anyway. Can’t wait for the NBN.

Your story is very common across Canberra. I am still amazed how their salesforce people didnt get taken to court over that.

I am a Transact customer and was an iinet customer. I left iinet because their transact plans were not shaped and a couple of times I got enormous bills for excess usage (teenager in the house). Iinet reversed the bills after I pointed out the misleading information on their website (which said their plans were shaped) and the second time after I was able to prove that their advertised warning system didn’t send any warnings to me. It wasn’t worth the risk of a third enormous bill so I moved to grapevine which has shaped plans for transact.

it will be interesting to see if iinet have shaped plans for transact customers in the future. I just made a quick check of their website and it still says
All iiNet broadband plans come with:
….No excess quota usage charges (we use shaping instead!)……

That is what it said when I got my first enormous bill. Worth checking before you switch if you are a transact customer!

I am also annoyed that although I am less than 800 metres from an exchange, apparently transact is the only available service for me (other than wireless).

watto23 said :

I was a big fan of Transact, until they didn’t run cable past my house after telling me it was coming and then when they tried to trick me into signing over my home and mobile phones to them, to be a priority user when the transact cable was installed. Nearly 10 years later no cable, dodgy Telstra priced services. Yep no competition in my suburb anyway. Can’t wait for the NBN.

FYI I’m talking Greenway and Bonython here. I’m aware there are also a few other pockets outside of Gungahlin that have similar issues.

I had the opposite experience to you. I signed on for Transact cable ten years ago. As part of that I had to sign over my land line, so they started billing me for that part straight away. Months went by and no cable installed, so I inquired and was told that Transact had changed their mind. I pointed out that I had a written contract, for which there was offer, acceptance and consideration so that they were legally required to install the cable or I would take them to court for breach of contract. Guess what happened? Transact changed their mind again and installed the cable. This did require a couple of conversations with Ivan but it did happen.

Keijidosha said :

mikal said :

Rollersk8r said :

…indeed what the NBN means for the optic fibre they already have??

The transact fibre deployment isn’t as good as the NBN and I assume will be pulled out. I can’t imagine NBNco will skip over areas just because they have existing coverage.

In older suburbs the TransACT network is fibre-to-node, basically optic fibre cable run into suburban streets with property connections made via existing twisted pair copper phone lines. The two problems with this system are slower speeds and network congestion (the more people who connect to a node, the slower the connections). I suspect that NBN will buy out this network and leave it as is, or upgrade the node-to-home links, rather than duplicate the whole thing.

Ahh yes, fibre to node vs fibre to home. Question answered. Current speed is ordinary, but tolerable, until NBN comes to town.

mikal said :

Rollersk8r said :

…indeed what the NBN means for the optic fibre they already have??

The transact fibre deployment isn’t as good as the NBN and I assume will be pulled out. I can’t imagine NBNco will skip over areas just because they have existing coverage.

In older suburbs the TransACT network is fibre-to-node, basically optic fibre cable run into suburban streets with property connections made via existing twisted pair copper phone lines. The two problems with this system are slower speeds and network congestion (the more people who connect to a node, the slower the connections). I suspect that NBN will buy out this network and leave it as is, or upgrade the node-to-home links, rather than duplicate the whole thing.

@#$% me, what a boys club.

mikal said :

Rollersk8r said :

…indeed what the NBN means for the optic fibre they already have??

The transact fibre deployment isn’t as good as the NBN and I assume will be pulled out. I can’t imagine NBNco will skip over areas just because they have existing coverage.

I’d imagine it’d be far more cost effective to just buy it off iiNet…

Plenty of black spots in canberra that Transact decided they didn’t want to touch as well. Actually a prime example of why the NBN is needed because for some suburbs its not economically viable and others are a gold mine. Kind of like banks, they’ll do something only when its making a profit too.

I was a big fan of Transact, until they didn’t run cable past my house after telling me it was coming and then when they tried to trick me into signing over my home and mobile phones to them, to be a priority user when the transact cable was installed. Nearly 10 years later no cable, dodgy Telstra priced services. Yep no competition in my suburb anyway. Can’t wait for the NBN.

FYI I’m talking Greenway and Bonython here. I’m aware there are also a few other pockets outside of Gungahlin that have similar issues.

Rollersk8r said :

…indeed what the NBN means for the optic fibre they already have??

The transact fibre deployment isn’t as good as the NBN and I assume will be pulled out. I can’t imagine NBNco will skip over areas just because they have existing coverage.