Whether the explanations given by iBurst are legitimate or just further ‘excuses’, the upshot for gamers is that connection problems persist. One gamer has now decided to ‘downgrade’ his iBurst account for ‘E-Mail purposes for my girlfriend’. He is selling his WoW account, painstakingly built up over 4 years, and his disillusion is markedly evident in his curt tone:

I will not be using the internet anymore due to the frustration of connection problems. I am also in the process of selling my 4 year old WoW account and canceled my Subscription and i quit my raiding group last night. And all this because IBurst can’t deliver ! (Mananger, MyBroadBand, 5 August 2009)

But then it struck me that the (UTD) modem’s after-life reiterates the central starting point of my gripe: that I gave notice, my account was closed, with no debt at the end of December.

I managed to sell the modem only in late February 2007, two months after my account was closed. iBurst blocks modems when the account assigned to the modem is still in arrears. So, if someone closes an account, but is in arrears, that person won’t have a working modem to sell. The modem buyer normally requests the modem’s ID number from the seller and first checks with iBurst that the modem has been cleared before buying it.

X, who bought my modem, indeed followed this procedure, confirmed that no money was owed on the modem and came to collect the modem from my house. I never heard from him again. I.e. the modem was in working order in both senses of the word. It had been cleared by iBurst; the original account had no arrears.

In the early evening two days ago (29 July), I finally received a proper explanation about the glitch that has followed me like a hound from hell. In a telephone conversation, Jannie van Zyl (iBurst CEO) told me that iBurst records show a returned debit order for my account. It’s a simple explanation, and the arithmetic adds up. Why could no one tell me this back in 2007?

The problem, though, is that my records do not show a returned debit. I had sufficient funds, the debit ran. And it was not returned.

This is cause for anxiety. What happened to that money? Is it possible that somewhere in cyberspace this money has been siphoned off? On which side? What is the electronic system used between iBurst and banks (in my case Nedbank)? Is it secure?

Furthermore, I notice that a few days before the unsuspectedly high debit order ran, I did not have enough funds in my account to cover that debit order. There was enough to cover the month-to-month subscription for my notice period, but certainly not for a debit in the region of R4 800.00.

After my notice, and after that debit, I went to my Nedbank branch to make sure that iBurst would have no further access to my account – I went to close the monthly debit order. I cannot remember the specifics, but the Nedbank representative told me that because of the payment system that iBurst was using, I could not cancel the debit orders; it was up to iBurst to stop them from their side. (Does anyone have information or insight into this? I understand that iBurst customers with other banks have had no problems cancelling debit orders.)

I have not gone through my account with any forensic detail, but as far as I can remember, I was not debited by iBurst again following December 2006. But the whole billing and accounting system, for iBurst specifically, and online agreements in general, opens up scary possibilities.

First, it was ridiculously easy to open the iBurst account. The agreement to the debit order happens online between the customer and iBurst and you consent to iBurst debiting your account for fixed and agreed amounts. iBurst then has the power to debit your account, to which you have agreed. In other words, your consent to the agreement depends on great trust in the company’s integrity; in the narrow, technical sense, the integrity of their accounting systems, but also in the broader meaning of that word.

But in the case of Nedbank as per my experience (perhaps it’s different now, 3 years on), you cannot claim that power back. In the case of a disputation that may arise, you are at the mercy of iBurst to stop debiting your account.

Secondly, in the event of accounting errors on iBurst’s side – a not uncommon occurrence for several years now – how can you trust that your iBurst debit orders are in good hands? That errors are noticed and corrected timeously? If there is an error on their side, or on the banks’ side, who pays the penalty for returned debit orders?

Many iBurst customers complain about double billing – debit orders running twice. Could there be a problem in the software, which erroneously tags debits as returned, thus necessitating a second debit? And this glitch masks the problem, iBurst accounting can’t trace the problem and customers struggle endlessly to have their accounts reconciled? Or is the second debit a result of malfeasant hacking?

Van Zyl also asked me to fax him my bank statements for December 2006 and January 2007. Before I did so yesterday, 30 July, he called again to say that iBurst had found the missing debit order. He didn’t explain in any detail, but it seems that somewhere in the transmission between the banking software and the accounting software iBurst was using 3 years ago, the debit order was erroneously flagged.

So there’s a forensic resolution, but it is cold comfort that it took nearly 3 years to discover this glitch. What in the software triggered this contradiction? How thoroughly is software tested before implementation? Who decides on which software to use? Does iBurst have a tendering process for the provision of their administrative software?

Given that complaints about accounting problems persist, how good is the ‘new’ software they are using?

Questions remain.

[I]f you try raid you DC [disconnect] and get kicked from the raid group which gets you kicked from the leading PvE [Player vs Environment] guild on the realm…. (D34m0n7, MyBroadBand, 23 July 2009, 03:44 PM)*

The upshot is that a South African gamer that gets disconnected frequently is at a big disadvantage. Progress in the game (improving your character’s skills in battle and a range of other abilities) depends on experience in those skills. Being kicked off raiding parties result, ultimately, in a player’s abilities stagnating and equipment subsequently degrading from lack of use. And so they have to start over to get back to the level they may have spent many hours on previously gaining.

Constant activity is optimal because characters need to remain at peak to defend themselves and, hopefully, also win PvP (Player versus Player) battles.*

In addition to being disadvantaged in the virtual arena of the game, the gamer must still pay a subscription or will already have paid through pre-paid cards to gain access to the World of Warcraft servers. This upfront cost, with pre-paid cards ranging from R270 to R300 for 60 days’ access, cannot be recuperated if the gamer is unable to play because of connection problems via iBurst. On top of this is also the monthly payment for an internet service to iBurst, a service that many people get primarily to play online games.

There is also a social cost involved. Gamers typically befriend each other via the game and may eventually meet up and become real friends. But there is also social pleasure in the online friendships that form themselves: people share an interest (the game), and start hanging out in chatrooms when they’re not playing to discuss past campaigns or strategise for their next raid or even just to chew fat. Being frequently disconnected then has effects on this social side of online gaming as well. Where friends have connections through a different ISP and have been gaming, the disconnected gamer will feel left out when next people meet in a chatroom to discuss a recent raid.

The costs then multiply as the gamer sees his or her friends achieving and increasing their skills and abilities – growing and developing their characters – while the disconnected gamer’s own character or avatar stagnates and their weapons and other equipment degrade.

iBurst has been running a thread at MyBroadBand on the problems experienced by these gamers. The most recent one started on 10 July and asks gamers to post technical details of their connections so that iBurst can get a real-time picture of what’s going on and thereby get technicians to resolve the issues.[Update **] Almost two weeks later, the issues appear to remain unresolved according to D34m0n7′s thread.

One other poster at MyBroadBand has provided a further perspective on this issue:

…. I see more people are moaning and groaning.

You guys have just launched your IBurst Business portal as well as planning to list on the JSE. But if these kind [of] issues don’t start getting resolved you may have an exidus [sic.] of unhappy clients on your hands and where will that assist your growth plans. (Fulmine, MyBroadBand, 23 July 2009, 04:06 PM)

Notes

* World of Warcraft is an immersive role playing game – the human player controls a character (role) in a fantasy world along the genre lines of Lord of the Rings. The immersion depends a lot on the graphic richness of the environment, as well as on the gripping adventures or quests that may occur. The player-character (P) moves around this world and has to contend with whatever the artificial intelligence of the programme/ game throws at it – whatever may lie in wait in the game world, in a cave, a tavern or placid lake, thus E for Environment. Another mode is PvP, Player versus Player, where players do battle via their avatars. The immersion is quite addictive and on a par, in the best games, with the immersion that a good novel or film offers.

As these games are graphically rich, much information is passed up and down the internet connection and it is this strain that seems to be taxing iBurst’s service to gamers.

** See first note below, by a representative from iBurst

[Update 25 July 2009]: Another player has found a workaround for his WoW problems, “using a static IP via iBurst from MTNBusiness (Verizon) last night to test if it would work. I had perfect latency between 280-420ms, no lag spikes or disconnects in 25-man raids last night. Seems to work perfectly” (Diegoa, MyBroadBand, 25 July 2009, 10.52 AM)

iBurst’s complaint against Neotel was found not to have shown that any particular creative thought or crafting adhered to its use of the colour orange in its advertising and accordingly, iBurst could not assert that any advertising goodwill or protectable advertising property attached to its use of the colour orange.

Part of Neotel’s defense was to show that “no single advertiser could claim to own the colour orange”

Source: Sara-Jane Pluke, Moore Attorneys, at BizCommunity, 3 June 2009

In his own thread, a newbie to iBurst who was glad to hear that his new iBurst hardware would arrive today, Monday 20 July, was disappointed to hear of more delays at iBurst. I posted him a warning against iBurst, linking to my threads. That has been deleted.

I may be wrong, but I cannot help but feel that this is censorship in favour of iBurst. Apparently some members have been complaining that I am on a crusade and I don’t add value to discussions (defending myself, warning against iBurst). Instead of hitting the ignore function or avoiding threads started by me (some posts were purged from my threads – what are the readers doing there if I don’t add value?) – no, instead of hitting the ignore function, they complain. MyBroadBand.co.za, instead of telling them to use the ignore function, purges my posts, on the basis of a really silly reason.

It is common practice on forums to just ignore shit; it is common practice to ignore threads of a poster you don’t like. But the poor little diddikins came onto my thread, ripped into me. I responded and they ran to the mods.

I don’t believe for once that iBurst doesn’t have a hand in this.

A crusade? Yes, it may be a crusade, but members complaining about a crusade against iBurst can have uncomfortable posts purged that only defend myself against them? This smells like rotting carp. And it is cant.

This is how I believe it goes.

Diddikins (fictive name), who is a private member and probably a buddy of Jannie van Zyl, new CEO of iBurst, thinks he’ll curry favour with the new iBurst regime or perhaps the iBurst regime instructed him, I don’t know – hey, perhaps he’ll get a free hand-me-down gadget from bossman Jannie, perhaps he’ll get invited to a braai when the weather clears or when Jannie makes time for such from the amount of time he spends at MyBroadBand.co.za. So Diddikins shows how much he cares for Jannie and rips into me (Remember, Jannie is a member and can thus see who his homies are). I respond and Diddikins flounders in the joke, perhaps had their sensitivities bruised. He complains: this guy is running a crusade. My posts start disappearing.

I query the purge with Rudolph Muller, Manager (Owner as well, I believe) at MyBroadBand.co.za. He tells me members have complained, I must take it up with members. Of course, he won’t and cannot give me the names because the complaints are private.* He can neatly avoid the issue.**

He insists it’s not censorship under direction, that the mods don’t even know who advertise (!) on MyBroadBand.co.za. That it was a simple matter of a private member – i.e. not representatives of a corporation like iBurst – complaining. Rudolph himself naturally has moderating powers, so, there’s one mod who knows who advertises at MyBroadBand.co.za.

So, iBurst has a friend in Diddikins who has managed to silence some posts by an iBurst critic. But there’s no electro-trail showing that iBurst or Jannie has a hand in it, because Diddikins did the dirty work out of the goodness of his heart. MyBroadband.co.za can rest with good conscience that iBurst didn’t ask them to censor me, that they were acting on a complaint, feeble as the complaint might be, from a private member.

It is not a coterie, it is a cabal, and it’s ‘hand of God’ work I have seen operate on other threads myself. I did add value, especially to the newbie who still awaits his iBurst hardware, but that value was not in iBurst’s interest. MyBroadBand.co.za may as well have told me that the value I add is not in iBurst’s interests. At least it would be honest.

I can’t understand how people can’t see how transparent their own machinations are. In both idiocy and the desperate censorship (because it is always an act of desperation) – no matter whether the issue is politics that touches many people or one consumer’s complaint – they cast themselves in habit and intellect on the desperate side of people like P.W. Botha, Robert Mugabe, Islamic fundamentalists, Khomeini, etcetera.

MyBroadBand.co.za should be ashamed. They acted on such a feeble complaint and therefore it is so transparent as to what is going on. Originally a kind of tech consumer advocacy organisation, MyBroadBand.co.za is, by way of this machination, clearly in iBurst’s pocket.

Woeful on all fronts.

Notes

* This sentence was added 22 July.

** This sentence was amended from: “In other words, he avoids the issue.”

It seems that that corporation’s whole philosophy of doing anything is just woefully inadequate and misdirected.

@iBurst, as any fule kno, you follow someone in the hope that they’ll follow you. That was my motive. Did you think I’d be hurt by being blocked? You should be following me, a critic of your company, and hopefully gain some market research.

The new CEO of iBurst, Jannie van Zyl, is a long-time member there, but has now a new profile/account under his real name and as iBurst CEO. As I make clear, my irritation is not with the new CEO, although some of his responses to me, I must say, have been woefully inadequate. [See this post; top right-hand corner links to the thread.]

Readers can read the post under discussion here now and which follows in the context of its own thread. I duplicate it here to broaden its readership.

However, there seems to be a coterie, if not cabal, of MBB members who, because of a historical forum relationship, seem to fawn over Van Zyl and who, in seemingly wanting to cover for him, disregard the substantive accusations I make against iBurst. Their focus is on looking to the future and not dwelling on negativity. Noble intentions. But my point is exactly that the history of iBurst, as well as the iBurst that existed on 16 July 2009, have disallowed me, and also hundreds and hundreds of other people, to forget the bad history. Again, a story thought long ago ended, resurrected. So, it’s ridiculously child-like to insist on guff such as ‘looking to the future’. I was in my own, post-iBurst future. The present iBurst returned me to the past.

I have no idea of what the personal relationships between authorities at MyBroadBand and representatives of Iburst may be behind the scenes. I understand that there is an economic relationship, primarily because of advertising on MyBroadBand. My posts on there about iBurst have been vitriolic (but with fair reason). MyBroadBand has terms of use that include subjective terms by which posts may be removed. In short, another reason for duplicating the post here is that I worry that posts may disappear from MyBroadBand’s forums.

To the post then:

True [name of commentator to whom I respond]. I was thinking about it this morning. It’s clear, also, that both Shaun and Jannie Van Zyl are liked here on [MBB]. I have no problem with Shaun (nor Jannie), especially since I am more and more certain that it was Shaun who, in 2006, listened to my appeal and gave me the refund. Then already people knew that he was the go-to guy around here. I was then using a pseudonym here, which I can’t remember (!), and I am sure there’s a post where I ask around for a telephone number or something that would lead me to calling him.

And, as you say, it is unfortunate that Jannie, as new CEO, has to bear or does bear the brunt of past customers’ irritation and anger; so I was thinking that it is unfortunate that it seems that he is a target of my anger.

So let me say this first, categorically: I remain entirely pissed off with the way my story has gone, and I remain pissed off that that story is just one story in an overwhelming plethora of similar stories, pointing to what we all know is (I won’t say has been) accounting incompetence on an absurd scale. So, I am pissed of not because my story is an individual oddity; I am pissed off because, on the evidence of ongoing wide-scale incompetence, an old story has quite unsuspectingly appeared on my blissful horizon. As I said before: a bad break-up has, 3 years later, been replayed, for the second time, when you thought the first replay, 2 years after the bad break up, was definitely the last replay. It was on VHS, an old, obsolete format, that first replay. But lo and behold, they’ve transferred it to Blue-ray or whatever new format and here they are, forcing you to watch another replay. No, to re-live it.

But, categorically, I am pissed off with the iBurst that existed on 16 July 2009. Categorically, I am pissed with a corporation whose ridiculously bad habits had, in my experience, been in existence since 2006, and, based on reportage all over the net, here and elsewhere, had existed prior to that. I am pissed off because those bad habits touched me, again, and when I had long ago exorcised its toxins (how many times do I have to make this point?).

Excuse my Tagalog, and forgive my crude sexism, but it grates my tits (yes it does, and it shocks me that I am capable of using this phrase, which I have never used before) that this all happens then in a company which up until now, in the broader public’s eye, had been run by a boss who had the absolutely naive but perverted gumption to write such godawful **** (faeces) [shit censored at MBB] as Don’t Panic. Don’t panic, everything will be just super-dandy again, while, as I said, there have been an ongoing, loud gnashing of teeth among Don’t Panic’s customers. People should get that point: bosses now, like politicians, want to be celebrities, and, it seems, they don’t give a f–k [self-censored; would be censored at MBB] about how they disempower the people whose hard-earned money ultimately pay their salaries. (Buy Ricoffee!? He should go tell that to the f–king birds.[ditto])

That shows – are we surprised? – a massive, cosmological, light-year long disconnect between company boss and customers in the case of iBurst. Disconnects between big companies and customers (or big organisations and their members) are not unusual at all, but in iBurst’s case any sane person who knows and has experience of it has to admit that the disconnect is something special. And the contrast between the feel-good twaddle that company bosses enthralled to their own misguided, quasi-philosophical pretensions like to dabble in, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the anger and disempowerment their customers flounder in and of which bosses remain blissfully unaware – clearly wilfully – this contrast is a chiaroscuro that not even God, in his infinite wisdom, can have ever imagined. Night and day, black and white – these don’t come anywhere near it.

Hyperbole yes, but I tell you, even if you are bored with hearing about complaints against iBurst, look at the comments on HelloPeter. Consider the contrast between people’s disempowerment and desperation there, and the civil, joky, chummy-chummy exchanges between users and representatives of iBurst here at MyBroadBand. People who know where to look for information (like us on this forum) can gain some form of empowerment, and therefore relief, from iBurst’s incompetence. But you cannot disregard the disempowerment of people simply because they don’t know that here, on MBB, they can gain access to a helpful iBurst representative and even, of late, its new CEO.

Which leads me to these rhetorical and not original questions: Why can people not use and receive the same level of service simply from posting at iBurst’s own site? Why do you have to raise a stink at HelloPeter first? Or be part of a coterie at MBB?

So, categorically, my complaint is not against Shaun. My complaint, as I’ve indicated above, is not against the new CEO per se. But Jannie has responded to me and he is now the CEO of a company with an unfortunate history, of which I am just one individual who shares in that misfortune.

But his responses to me should be read in this context: he has been a long time member – under a different guise – at MBB. In other words, at MBB he is largely an MBB member, and not the CEO of iBurst. By this I mean that a history of his interactions here, prior to being CEO at iBurst, will govern how other people treat him and cover for him. He is, in short and in the main, among a group of buddies. That is the nature of these forums. It produces a different persona.

I am not sure whether interactions between me and Shaun, and between me and Jannie, here on this forum, is appropriately business-like (by this I mean that it is different from say, talking across a desk in an office, business-like; it’s a point about context). All in all, members here – and people who know to look here – are part of a fortunate coterie who happen to have access to two iBurst representatives and who thus can have a greater fortune in getting their problems seen to quickly. But that does not erase the larger problems for the overwhelming majority of people who have experienced and still experience problems with iBurst.

So I am not convinced that their presence here is good or is a sign that things will necessarily change at iBurst, that the disconnect will be overcome. In terms of marketing research, I’m not sure how significant the sample at MBB of exchanges between members and iBurst is. But I would venture to say that the sample at HelloPeter is a better sample about complaints. The sample here at MBB may be skewed by the relationships between people; newbies may say harsh words, but in this thread, for instance, there have been several posts covering for iBurst.

But imagine the number of people who have not heard of HelloPeter, imagine that sample. One can often judge from the HelloPeter complaints that many people are perhaps older and not quite in the loop of technology. One can then infer that there must be another group of people outside the fortunates who know or have heard of HelloPeter. That ouside group is where real marketing research should take place. MBB is not the place for research if you want to expand your business. MBB members know to look around and will drop you like a hat if needs be. In any case, there should be no need for customers to go somewhere else than a company’s primary location, brick-and-mortar or online.

That’s some marketing consulting, for free.

But, one cannot help to muse that it seems that iBurst’s business model depends on ignorance. Many complaints at HelloPeter express a big disappointment in feeling being duped; it is clear even that customers were not of the sort who might look around and do some research before they decide on the particular technology they want to use to connect. It is exactly the kind of ignorance that marketing depends on. And my analysis is that iBurst remains happy to garner users from that demographic while not caring about them once they are users locked in to whatever package.

And here I mean locked in in more than its legalistic sense. They may be on month to month, but if you have little money, switching ISP technology requires cash that for many people is a big outlay: new modem + new connection fees + waste of old connection fees + pro-rata on old modem (if the accounting works). Throw in then, double billing, time wasted, etc., and the cost, monetary and otherwise, of switching grows. Those people, the tech-ignorant, are locked in, and all they want is this new (for them) technology to work.

To reiterate the point, it seems that the business model depends more on these poor souls than on the tech-savvy – who are most probably more wallet savvy as well – on MBB. The problem of course is that it is the tech-savvy that have the more powerful voice. Engaging with the tech-savvy, keeping them satisfied means minimising negative publicity, while the tech-ignorant, who remain unheard and are the most dissatisfied, don’t even know that their experience is part of a massive blunder, and not just one individual bureaucratic error. And this point is then borne out by what goes on here at MBB.

When I joined Cybersmart, it was by word-of-mouth. I’ve never come across any of their people online in a secondary place. They don’t need to make promises. They deliver. The history of their delivery becomes their reputation, and that reputation then is their promise. People here, on the iBurst threads, may not want to hear me bandying the name Cybersmart around. But that’s my contrasting experience to my history with iBurst. Cybersmart, ironically then, is faceless but I don’t feel like I am interacting with a faceless business who leaves me disempowered; iBurst, via MBB, is not entirely faceless, but the experience has been.

I wish iBurst luck in changing, but I remain sceptical. In any event, my persistent irritation and anger has to do with my history with iBurst, and has nothing to do with the future of iBurst. If anyone I know wants to bank on the future of iBurst, I will feel compelled to raise my history with them.

———- [end of MBB post]