Splog
0
hey everyone, i've been abusing the ispreview service for many a year, but have never really been compelled to complain about a service until this year.
Now, for starters, this is a complaint about a service provided for students in various halls of residences/student accomodation etc. around the UK.
to see if you're affected you can check here:
http://www.keycom.co.uk/domenu2.asp?check=348
To give you a brief overview, Keycom are a company that contacts universities, offering to provide their students internet access to their halls of residence. the idea is that if you go through keycom the contract is specifically tied to how long you'll be at the residence and they provide (incredibly restictive) routers(, which you have to use, and to which you have no access to the configuration). it's supposed to be nice and easy to use so everyone can get it.
They use a strange system where you are auto-diverted to a login screen whenever you use the internet, at which point you have to log in.
despite being told we could happily swap the modem between devices, this isn't entirely true. when you swap devices (ie. desktop to laptop) you're told that you're already logged in and you need to wait a couple hours for you to be "logged out". also, every 3-4 hours, the internet just stops. after about 5minutes, the log in screen flashes up and you're reconnected.
obviously that's next to useless for a lot of people.
basically, keycom push themselves as being your only option at most halls, for both internet and phone calls. turns out this is piffle. you're perfectly entitled to have a bt line installed and get your own phone/internet package. i strongly recommend you do this.
asides from the random disconnections and various other flaws with the service, the quality of service is pretty poor also. at the best of times you can expect about 130ms ping to your average game server and downloads vary from 40-100k/s on 1meg. when i first had it installed i got about 5k/s and well over 3 second pings. after many complaints, i eventually had to threaten to have my credit card company have my payment retracted and additionally i had to contact my university with the same threat to highlight the problem i was having with the company.
basically, if you have keysurf, i strongly recommend you email your university to cancel the contract with keysurf and instead to offer students advice on getting there own internet provided by another company.
i'm not entirely sure what the process is for this, so hopefully i'm not being too daft with this post. i'm happy to answer questions to anyone else moving into halls at the above unis or having problems with keysurf.
p.s.- if you do go with keySurf, and I *really* hope you don't. i suggest you pay by credit card, as it's much easier to have a credit card company revoke the payment and therefore you have a bit more leverage.
only 3 more weeks left, and then i'll be free of these muppets and onto sweet merciful nildram.
Now, for starters, this is a complaint about a service provided for students in various halls of residences/student accomodation etc. around the UK.
to see if you're affected you can check here:
http://www.keycom.co.uk/domenu2.asp?check=348
To give you a brief overview, Keycom are a company that contacts universities, offering to provide their students internet access to their halls of residence. the idea is that if you go through keycom the contract is specifically tied to how long you'll be at the residence and they provide (incredibly restictive) routers(, which you have to use, and to which you have no access to the configuration). it's supposed to be nice and easy to use so everyone can get it.
They use a strange system where you are auto-diverted to a login screen whenever you use the internet, at which point you have to log in.
despite being told we could happily swap the modem between devices, this isn't entirely true. when you swap devices (ie. desktop to laptop) you're told that you're already logged in and you need to wait a couple hours for you to be "logged out". also, every 3-4 hours, the internet just stops. after about 5minutes, the log in screen flashes up and you're reconnected.
obviously that's next to useless for a lot of people.
basically, keycom push themselves as being your only option at most halls, for both internet and phone calls. turns out this is piffle. you're perfectly entitled to have a bt line installed and get your own phone/internet package. i strongly recommend you do this.
asides from the random disconnections and various other flaws with the service, the quality of service is pretty poor also. at the best of times you can expect about 130ms ping to your average game server and downloads vary from 40-100k/s on 1meg. when i first had it installed i got about 5k/s and well over 3 second pings. after many complaints, i eventually had to threaten to have my credit card company have my payment retracted and additionally i had to contact my university with the same threat to highlight the problem i was having with the company.
basically, if you have keysurf, i strongly recommend you email your university to cancel the contract with keysurf and instead to offer students advice on getting there own internet provided by another company.
i'm not entirely sure what the process is for this, so hopefully i'm not being too daft with this post. i'm happy to answer questions to anyone else moving into halls at the above unis or having problems with keysurf.
p.s.- if you do go with keySurf, and I *really* hope you don't. i suggest you pay by credit card, as it's much easier to have a credit card company revoke the payment and therefore you have a bit more leverage.
only 3 more weeks left, and then i'll be free of these muppets and onto sweet merciful nildram.























