I decided to have Avonline provide me with an alternative to my telephone line broadband as I live in a rural area and the speed was less than 2 megs. OK for Youtube but not so good for anything else.
I contacted Avonline and after some negotiation I was “sold” on the claims that I “will receive up to 20 Meg for most part”. Despite much sale pitch pressure I opted for paying the extra so I could have the 1 year contract instead of the sales pitch to sign up for 2 years. It turned out to be money well spent as if I had been tempted to save that small amount of cash I would have had a 2 year contract and would have been stuck with this system for another 12 months!
The first disappointment was the size of the dish. It is huge! Almost a metre across and standing well over a metre from the wall on an enormous bracket. Brilliant white, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Comments about Jodrel Bank were rife from my neighbours. What an eyesore.
Despite the size we fitted it to a suitable wall. Alignment was simple and we started to enjoy the “20 Meg” downloads, unfortunately the best we could get was 8 Meg and that was “off peak” and unreliable.. This was the best and more often it was 2 Meg and less. I contacted the help line and they had me do all sort of amendments. Line the dish up, turn the router on and off, test it over 24 hours to see how the downloads worked out etc. It was obvious that the service was being “throttled” and I was being effectively starved of download speed. After complaints the service improved slightly but even so at one point it registered 720K! I haven’t seen that since dial up! One other irksome feature was dropping out altogether. I lost count of the number of times I had to go into the loft to reset the router!
I complained repeatedly to the help line and one technician suggested that it was “because you are using it at peak times”, Should I, I suggested, get up at 2 am to watch Youtube? Trying to watch it at 7 pm was almost impossible. It buffered incessantly.
Fortunately as I said earlier I have opted for the 12 month contract and I terminated it in accordance with the contract. I had had enough! However, it is up to the renter to dismantle and return the dish and equipment as it all belongs to Avonline. The option is to have their engineer come and dismantle it and return it. Not cheap! I decided to do it myself and it still cost me over £30 in carrier charges to have this huge dish and router equipment returned.
In a nutshell I would advise anyone considering having this system to think long and hard and read the reviews. If you are expecting 20 Meg then from my experience think again! How is it that Avonline can advertise “up to 20Meg and then give such an appalling service? It beats me!
I was happy on only two occasions with this system. The day I installed it and the day I sent it back!