Asia Online
www.asiaonline.net
Asia Online was one of only a few ISPs that had no facility to allow users to subscribe online. The Web site quite happily tells the user how to connect and setup their computer with clear and easy-to-follow instructions. However, getting other information such as connection plans is like getting blood from a stone. The site is nowhere near as friendly as the other ISP Web sites and some users would probably not bother to use the e-mail facility to enquire about Asia Online's connection plans, rather choosing to go to another more user-friendly provider.
The news is not all bad however; once we got through to the staff at Asia Online we actually found them to be the most friendly of all the ISP staffers we talked to.
After dredging through the Asia Online Web site for quite some time, we were able to find quite a long list of POPs both in Australia and also numbers in New Zealand and Hong Kong. There is a total of around 100 POPs in Australia. It seems that just about any two-horse town has a point of presence. When we received the feature tables back from Asia Online however, they listed only about 40 POPs. We were not able to reconcile this difference in the time we had available.
Plans range from 15 hours per month for AU$14.95, through 50 and 100 hours permonth for AU$29.95 and AU$49.95m respectively. There is also an unlimited plan for a AU$25 setup fee and AU$19.95 per month. Please note for whatever reason, these prices do not include the 10 percent GST.
Connection support is the standard of KFlex and PPP. Modem ratio seems about average at 10:1. Asia Online would not disclose their number of users, cache size or exact bandwidth for reasons of commercial sensitivity. Help desk times vary from POP to POP, but for example, the Melbourne hours are 7:30am to 7pm.
Asia Online's performance is best described as variable. They had amongst the best ping times tested, both the international and national downloads were generally good, but some particularly slow downloads to Sydney brought the average right down.
7%
3%
Do not use Dodo ADSL- They have really bad customer service. And technical support.
On their unlimited plan. You start downloading until it get to 1G and then the service starts to have ‘problems’ and you can’t connect no more.
When you call technical support, they give you a phone number to call only to find that a machine answers and ask you to leave your phone number. And then no one call back.
When you call customer service, you speak to a person, they redirects you to a blank line and then you hear a dial tone. Which means the line hung up.
I spoke to a customer sales representative called Steve to pay the bill using credit card. When I asked him to select a plan for the next month, instead of having to call back, his reply was : “ You have to call back next month to select.” And then he hung up on me. This is the kind of service Dodo provides.
I have never spoke to any customer service person who hangs up on the customer.
And then later I find that my service was suspended. Even though I had just spoke to Steve 5 minutes earlier to pay for that month using my credit card.
I am on a 3 months contract with DoDo. I still have 2 months left to go. After this kind of customer service I get I will not be using them after the 3 months period.
Note: If you disconnect before 3 months they charge you a disconnection fee $100.
Don’t sign any long term contracts with any ADSL Provider unless you are sure that you trust the service.