Madasafish Broadband Provider

GiantRolo

I just wanted to vent a little on the subject of Madasafish broadband. They advertise their broadband service to new customers as being 11.99 per month (all well and good so far) but then, when you fill in your application, you get a not insubstantial 5.10 P&P charge plus VAT on top. Now yes, I hear what you're going to say, that's it's still going to average out cheaper than AOL etc. at 17.99 per month, but still! It's the shady principle and 'hidden cost' thing that irritates me.

Hmph.

On the subject of broadband, does anyone know of any providers that are offering free wireless routers for new customers with a cheap (less than 17.99 per month!) service? I would be ever so grateful if anyone did!

redux

surely that p&p charge is one-off on delivering the modem, not a monthly charge?

yebaws

yes, it is, and I just sold my free modem for £26 on ebay (I already have my own modem) which makes things a little better value. BTW, recorded delivery cost £6...

mattersdorff

yebaws wrote:

yes, it is, and I just sold my free modem for £26 on ebay (I already have my own modem) which makes things a little better value. BTW, recorded delivery cost £6...

Oh how I wish I'd never signed up to Madasafish - India call centre that you can't get through to and the most unreliable service I've ever experienced.

appalling :mad:

yebaws

mattersdorff wrote:

Oh how I wish I'd never signed up to Madasafish - India call centre that you can't get through to and the most unreliable service I've ever experienced.

appalling :mad:

Maybe I was lucky, maybe you were unlucky, but I've had no problems - Got through to the call centre in India fine and they gave me what I wanted (although I'm not sure why I should have had to call to get my account password, which was never emailed to me). I had had a fight with BT broadband before to get my service upgraded from 512K to 1mb (their line checker says that I can only have 512k, but the engineer who installed the broadband checked it at the time and got 2MB) When I transfered to madasafish, BT tried to downgrade the line to 512k, but madasafish intervened personally after I emailed them to get it back to 1MB. That, I was pleasantly surprised by.

The reliability of the service is surely the same whoever you use? So far as I'm aware, it's all BT's gear - just different companies leasing it out. I suppose the crucial thing is how problems are dealt with when they arise. Even then, if it's a hardware fault, all the ISP can do is contact BT wholesale to get them to fix it....

WebJunkie007

As a minor point - I think that you'll find that their call centre is NOT in India.

Madasafish_Customer_Care

Hello mattersdorff,

I work within Madasafish CS (as you can probably tell by my handle). If you can please PM me your Madasafish Username, I'd be happy to assist you.

Kind regards,
Samara
Madasafish Customer Care

mattersdorff

WebJunkie007 wrote:

As a minor point - I think that you'll find that their call centre is NOT in India.

obviously I was wrong in presuming it was India... it's just because everyone I've spoken to at Madasafish has had an Indian accent and Indian-type name...... but I've found out they are actually in SOUTH AFRICA.

Ebookers, Tiscali, Madasafish and so many other companies have their call centres operating out of India or other far-flung countries and I've often had to end up demanding UK contacts in order to complain to a UK official about the incompetence of their overseas call centres in order to finally get problems resolved.... this sometimes takes weeks to sort out and get refunds (3 months in the case of Ebookers who failed to send me tickets for a KL to Langkawi leg of a trip I took a few years back - leaving us at KL airport forced to pay for a brand new full-priced ticket).

I'm sure there are thousands of people out there like me who have absolutely done their head in, running around in circles, bashing their head against the wall trying to deal with these no-frills companies and their incompetent staff - that's not to say Madasafish staff are incompetent but their failure to ensure their "24-7" technical support number is reachable is bad enough (perhaps they need technical support for their technical support).

I've just had enough and am taking the time to write here so anyone considering Madasafish can hear my thoughts before deciding whether to use them as their broadband provider. I totally accept that perhaps a lot of people have had absolutely no problems whatsoever with Madasafish and no doubt a lot of people who've had problems with Wanadoo (who were perfect for me for over 18 months).

Maybe this is a presumption but I'd take a pretty good guess that if Madasafish's call centre was based in the UK then I wouldn't have been cut off 5 times when trying to call them the other night. Maybe I'd be on hold for 2 hours but I wouldn't be cut off.

When I signed up to Madasafish I was expressly told that my phone line could accept a 2mb plus connection speed (which I'm currently connected to) yet one person at Madasafish has suggested that they might have to reduce the speed to 1mb in order for it to work properly - it just keeps getting worse.

I dread the thought of having to deal with these sort of problems for the next 12 months until I can switch for free.

There should be some sort of legal grounds for cancelling a contract (without penalties) with a company that fails to provide you with a reliable service for which you pay for and one you can't get through to for support that's supposed to be available 24/7!

mattersdorff

Just a quick additional note to my above rant - I just want to say that Madasafish haven't been the worst company I've ever had to deal with... I've had far worse experiences with Tiscali, Ebookers, Argos and others but these latest problems with Madasafish just tipped me over the edge.

So far, my conversations with their staff have been quite ok, despite the fact that my problems haven't been resolved..... they haven't been rude and it was only last night that I've failed to be connected to their support centre.

I feel much better now having got that all off my chest.

mattersdorff

Madasafish_Customer_Care wrote:

Hello mattersdorff,

I work within Madasafish CS (as you can probably tell by my handle). If you can please PM me your Madasafish Username, I'd be happy to assist you.

Kind regards,
Samara
Madasafish Customer Care

I know this post is fast turning into a one-man show (me) as I continually add messages but for what it's worth - here was my reply to the Madasafish lady that replied to my post offering to try to fix my problems.

Dear Samara,

thankyou for sending me an email and for your offer to try to resolve the problems i've been experiencing with Madasafish. It really has been a most upsetting experience since joining your company.

It all stems from the fact that I have had continual drop outs - where the connection goes dead and doesn't come back until I reset the Voyager router - I do hope you won't treat me differently after you get to see my account. I have already had some serious discussions with Madasafish supervisors because I thought I was within my legal rights to cancel my Madasafish subscription within 7 days of the service starting (this was on advice from Consumer Affairs).

I wanted to cancel the service while I thought I could because I am petrified by the thought of having the same experience I did with Tiscali a few years back when the connection reliability was appalling and their support lines were IMPOSSIBLE to get through to (and when you did get through you had to wait on hold for 45 mins plus before speaking to anyone and then you'd spend another hour trying to resolve issues with them - they'd tell you to go off and 'try this' or 'try that' and of course it would never work and I'd end up having to call back and go through the same process all again (and all on premium rate phone numbers!).

In the end Tiscali agreed to cancel my subscription without penalties.

So I leave it in your hands to do what you've offered and put things right swiftly.... I'll believe it when I actually do get a reliable 2mb connection as I was assured I would get when I signed up and a connection that doesn't cut out every 30 minutes but perhaps I'll be surprised and you'll be able to help correct things within the next few days.

tompparker

Hi GiantRolo,

Don't know if you've heard about it but Wanadoo are offering up to 8 meg broadband at 14.99 for first six months then 17.99 after that (1 year contract).You can also get a wireless connection free for six months then £4 a month after that. The set up and modem are free, I think.

I don't know how good Wanadoo are though, worth checking the forums before you make any commitment.

Hope that helps