Aaaaargh shoot me now please I can't take any more! (free24-7.net)

Member Name: Judgee

Product:	free24-7.net
Date:	08/05/02 (305 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Could be worse

Disadvantages: Could be a lot better

Having been stung by Bigbluesky for £35 for 1 years unlimited access (which turned out to be a big con) I went to Freeserve. Freeserve were all right for a few months but they eventually became unreliable with frustratingly long logging on times. So finally I came across free24-7. Billed as an unlimited, no frills service for £7.99 a month I was sceptical, but desperate. The price was good and it seemed a realistic amount to be able to provide a sustainable service, without going bust overnight. One other aspect of the service that I liked was the month by month basis of payment/contract. Basically this meant that if you wanted to leave them, you just pressed a button on their very simplistic homepage and you were free to leave. No questions asked and no further payment required. Of course Internet service providers are notoriously bad, and free24-7 has managed to annoy me immensely. So first I'll tell you about them, and then I'll tell you why they are no longer on my Christmas card list!


Before February 15th 2002, free24-7 was supposedly an unlimited, no frills Internet service provider, supplying an Internet connection for £7.99 a month. However, they were not as unlimited as they liked to suggest and people who used their service too intensely, would often find themselves barred for a while. Unfortunately unlimited usage does not apparently mean unlimited usage when it comes to Internet service providers. Anyway, the prices quoted in this opinion are up to date as of 7th May 2002.


As I mentioned earlier, I started on the original service of £7.99 per month for unlimited access to the Internet with no call up charges. When the new range of services came into effect in February, I was immediately placed on to the new limited service, restricted to a maximum usage of 28 hours per week with a cut off time of 2 hours (you could log back on again straight away!). Being the lowest tariff, the service remained a no frills affair me
aning no email address, no webspace and the worst contention ratio available. For those wondering what I mean by contention ratio. This is basically the amount of members signed up compared to the amount of lines available. So, looking at the basic service of free24-7, the contention ratio is 20:1. So for every one person trying to log on a possible twenty other users could in theory be attempting to log on at the same time and only one them would be able to connect. Sounds lousy, but it wasn't too bad to start off with. Unfortunately the service became oversubscribed and it eventually became impossible to log on at peak times. (and still is as far as I know?)


So, somewhat annoyed at the impossible daily task of trying to log on for hours at a time, I splashed out. Yes, I bumped my account up to V21 Lite at a monthly cost of £9.99, cut off time increased to 3 hours. There were two reasons for this. Firstly the contention ratio was better, so in theory I would only be battling against a possible fifteen other users when it came to logging on. The second reason was that I found that I needed to increase my allocation of hours to 42 per week. Changing accounts was a simple process of going to my log in page and pressing a button. It was simple, quick and easy and for a few weeks, absolutely trouble free. Also, as a bonus I was now able to use some unlimited webspace if I so wished (I didn't but others might!) and unlimited email addresses (which I did want!). Then the old problem started again, the service became over subscribed. Logging on at peak times became impossible once more and like a fool I decide to bump myself up again, to the next package available, V21 Standard.


V21 Standard pushed my monthly Internet costs up to £14.99 (this was now starting to look expensive against other ISP's). For the additional cost, I increased my available Internet time to a whopping 56 hours per week (did I hear you say ooooooooo!), the cut
off time increased to 4 hours to go with the unlimited webspace/unlimited email addresses. So was I pleased? Yes, once again the service ran smoothly for a few days and then the logging on problems started AGAIN ( I can see a pattern emerging!)


I have now had enough and will not be with this Internet service provider when my current monthly payment runs out. This is most annoying because I'll have to change all my email addresses AGAIN and find yet another Internet service provider!


To be fair, without the logging on problem and the occasional down time (they seemed to have fixed the downtime problems now anyway!) I would probably stay with them. Their homesite is easy to use and offers many facilities to check the system status, in particular just how busy your particular package is from moment to moment. That being said, all this means is that when you log on to the net through another service provider and check the system status, you can see that you cannot log on because it is too busy (a bit like getting an engaged tone on a normal telephone, you still can't get through but at least you know it's because it is busy!)


Setting up any existing email accounts to go through their system is not as easy as most of the other Internet service providers also. You will need some basic knowledge to do this (the same goes for setting up your internet dialler!) as this is very hands on rather than provided in a neat little downloadable file.


Overall, if you want to be able to use this service with the least amount of problems, you really have to go for the more expensive packages. I haven't listed them all yet but the others are basically Business, Small business, Unlimited (if only it was!) and Net head. All but the Net head (early hours of the morning option) and small business packages run into the hundreds as far as cost is concerned! The problem is that there are a lot of Internet service provider
s about that are far more competitively priced. As for reliability, is any Internet service provider reliable? Get real! They are all a bunch of crooks! They all have their problems be it connection problems, slow Internet speeds, limited email accounts, limited webspace or extortionate costs the list is endless. From my own experience this ISP sits somewhere in the middle, you could do worse but should expect better. So, Bye bye V21, I would like to say it's been fun, but you have pushed me too far. I am going to be a VIRGIN! Yes that's right, my long and tiresome search to find a good metered Internet service provider has landed me in Richard Bransons lap. Who knows, it could be the Holy Grail of the Internet world, somehow though, I doubt it!


They will be offering a Broadband service from August 2002 at a cost of £19.99. They also currently offer an 0845 service, if a metered service is not to your liking and you want to pay per minute!


Oh I nearly forgot, as for technical support, your choices are either:

A) Phone call to a help desk, manned by idiots and charged at national rate.

or

B} Send email to help desk (otherwise known as the internet triangle as so many of them seem to go missing!)



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