Karoo Applies Massive Bandwidth Throttling to Customers
Kingston Communications ‘aka’ Karoo are at it again.
Welcome the horrors of a monopoly! I’m on the Karoo Max package and I’m currently having my connection shaped down to just under 1000 Kbps (as shown on Karoo’s own test page). My ADSL connection is synchronised at 8128kbps so I thought I’d give tech support a call.
The nice chap I spoke to explained that my connection was being shaped as I’m on a contended service. After suggesting to him that I pay extra to ensure that I’m traffic shaped to a minimum he explained that it didn’t make any difference. Neither apparantly does the fact that I never breach my ‘Option 3′ 40GB of traffic a month.
As the ‘Option 3′ info box describes, this package is for…
“Families who regularly use the internet (especially in the evenings) for homework, music and movie downloads, and emailing family photos.”
This means then that Karoo’s fair usage policy is total rubbish and that when you buy the package advertised for usage ‘especially in the evenings’ you still get traffic shaped heavily in the ‘erm’ evenings!
So, there you have it folks. Paying extra to Karoo does not effect the level of contention you will receive on your connection. This beggars the question - Why pay more? What is KC spending all of my hard earned money on. Rebranding perhaps?
I’d switch if I could, but unfortunately there are no other broadband providers selling service over the Kingston Communications network. Why? Because KC will only resell broadband connectivity to them at the same price they’ll sell it to residential customers.
Makes selling service in Hull and area a little pointless doesn’t it….
Oh, and just as a footnote, to prove it’s not only me having issues, check out the Karoo User Group. I think together we need a little help here!
Update: After being approached by a fellow Karoo user for help, Just Uber was happy to give a home to The Unofficial Karoo User Forums. They’re run by a nice chap called Dylan who is trying to build a place where Karoo users can talk about their experiences. You can find me in there under the name lefty 
This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 9:27 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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September 19th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
ALL karoo customers should NOW get together and create an online petition to present to our member of parliament and the trading standards bureau. Maybe the monopolies commission too?
I only get 19% of my expected bandwidth at best; it’s usually worse than this!!!
If that is the best they can do then I should only pay for the bandwidth I actually have available; therefore I should only pay 19% of my monthly subscription charges, that would be much fairer and I’m sure EVERYONE out there would agree with this? - So what can we ALL do about it NOW. We (Karoo customers) must unite and pull together as an online community otherwise our complaints will fall on deaf ears or even NO ears at all! Can anyone suggest how we might go about achieving a satisfactory result?
September 19th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
F.Y.I. I wrote to watchdog; maybe we all should?
HERE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/tv_and_radio/watchdog/contact_index.shtml
Thank you for taking the time to write to BBC Watchdog…
Because we receive so many emails, faxes, letters and phone calls, we are unable to respond personally to each and every one. However, your correspondence will be read by our research team and if we are able to pursue your complaint, a researcher from the Consumer Unit will contact you.
Once again, many thanks
The Watchdog Team