Loxinfo's Ipstar - Customer Services Nightmare

[virtualtraveller]

I'm not sure how many others on this forum use Loxinfo's IPstar stellite system for ADSL but unfortunately if you live outside of Bangkok or the CBD of large cities, then this is your only option for hi-speed internet. It's farily reliable but costly and when things go wrong their customers services is laughably bad. Here is an account of my recent experiences. Points 11 and 12 are beyond belief but not surprising in Thailand.

1. April 2004: I contacted Media Magic company, the only Chiang Mai agent for installing IPstar, as it was the only option for ADSL in my suburb. They originally quoted me 20,000 baht to install which I rejected as too expensive and then they eventually lowered this to 8000 baht. I was told that this doesn’t buy the equipment - it is just the installation fee and perpetual leasing of the dish and modem.

2. May 2004: techincian arrives, tells me where he wants to place it in my garden, tells ME to arrange a standing pole for mounting and the leaves. I know nothing about construction, I assume every installation requires this pole so I called them back asking if they knew of a sub-contractor for the job. The responded with a quote of 6000 baht for this simple job. I refused and eventually found a company who did it for only 1000 baht (all it was, was a 2 meter pole set in two feet of concrete!).

3. After installing the system, they then had to return three times in five weeks to replace ‘faulty modems’ before it worked reliably.

4. From June until April 2005 the system worked mostly reliably, all through the rainy season, but sometimes not at the guaranteed 256k.

5. In May 2005 the system become very unstable and frequently dropped out, sometimes up to 10 times a day and occasionally for several hours, this created havoc for my design team uploading sites, and distorted my monthly download allocation (meaning I had to pay more).

6. During this time I contacted support several times, but got tired of being kept on the phone to Bangkok (at my expense) for up to an hour at time while they did diagnostics. In the end it was usually found to be their gateway that was down. Eventually I gave up on this and preferred to patiently wait for it to come back on.

7. Also during this time I kept a log of every time it failed and on most occasions called their local office and asked their staff member (khun Walaiporn) to also log the complaint.

8. At the end of May I returned their invoice unpaid with a faxed letter committing to pay once they had given me a satisfactory answer about their future reliability. Since I am to move house soon I need to decide whether to change to a competitor.

9. The complaint went unanswered and so I submitted the letter directly to their local office and demanded action. They then emailed me saying they couldn’t refund me (I had never actually asked for a refund), but offered 50 free hours of dial up, with no explanation about their faulty gateway.

10. During June the system has returned to normal and is 95% reliable.

11. Since I am moving house I then asked Media Magic to come and transfer the dish to the new premises and again they quoted me 8000 baht! This is an outrageous expense for moving equipment, considering it is the same as the original setup fee (which they justified as insurance against their investment in the equipment). The job took the technician only 3 hours last time so I can calculate they are ripping us off with a rate of more than 2500 baht per hour!!

12. In the meantime my wife has discovered they are running a special offer to new subscribers for 3000 baht, so in the end we simply cancelled the old subscription and signed up for a new one to overcome the problem, but it did involve plenty of unneccessary paperwork.

13. Then yesterday I received a reminder for the outstanding June subs but the accounts department, with prefect bad timing, had screwed up and invoiced me this time for an amount of about 10,000 suggesting that I hadn’t paid for the past three months (the previous reminder stated only 3000 baht).

14. To date, I still have not received any further response from CSLoxinfo despite sending them a copy of this draft.

Considering all of the above, and the fact that this service is 3000 baht a month for only 256k (twice as expensive as conventional ADSL), I really would not recommend this service to anyone. Unfortunately, for those people outside of the main city centres, it is the only option for ADSL and I think CSLoxinfo are taking advantage of this. Our business does web development and this service just isn’t good enough to maintain the standards that our overseas customers demand.

[Firefoxx]

Quick note: IPSTAR is a satellite service, and has nothing to do with ADSL. I think you're mixing it up with the term "broadband internet", which both IPSTAR and ADSL are. ADSL uses phone lines.

I don't think points 11 and 12 are all that surprising, since I experienced the same thing with True. I was threatened with legal action if I didn't pay.

[h90]

my experience with IPSTar is not that bad, I only made 50% of the bad experiences

[ode]

It sounds to me you have a beef with Media Magic, not Loxinfo...

[LivinLOS]

My IPStar tale was f4rom the early days of ther system (the old full size rackmount modems that had multiple loud fans !!).. It reads much like yours but in the end simply stopped with them..

Depsite 10's of emails they kept billing me for months and month after the system was discconeected (as JI net is doing now despite the fact I cancelled ADSL with them in Feb !!)..

I have discovered that in Thailand support simply does not exist even when paying 15k or so per month in charges !!

[lampard10]

Remember this is Thailand where everything is done arse-about-face. When I.P. Star first came out it was on a promotional 20,000 installation fee. Most people forgot this was Thailand and assumed it would go up when the promotion was over. It didn't. When the promotion was over, the price dropped. Who can you complain to? No-one. T.I.T. is the most exasperating thing about living here.

How many times have you gone into a shop and asked for something and they have told you it is sold out. When are you getting some more you ask. We're not, we can't sell it, is the reply.

[jaidam]

I agree with all points made by the OP.We were also quoted 8,000baht to move ipstar to a new location.

We also stopped complaining when it wasnt working finding the expense of calling them a waste of money.Everytime it was a problem at their end(even after they assured me there wasnt one).

I have bought a GPRS system which is 900 baht for unlimited use the first 6 months and then 400 hours per month.Its a much better deal.

One other point that has to be made is that ipstar is very slow for broadband and the GPRS with an AIS sim card is quite fast.It loads many website faster than ipstar.

In short ipstar isnt very good and the falling shareprice of Shin corp reflects this fact.Still,at least they have some good business in Burma thanks to the Thai taxpayers.

[lampard10]

I forgot the OP's question in my first reply. I have found that IP Star is expensive,but on the whole OK. Alright I run an Internet cafe, and it just about pays for itself, so in reality I am getting my access for nothing. I have found customer service helpful most of the time and terrible that 10% other. There is no halfway here. The first time I had a problem the conversation went

" Hello. Is that IP Star?"

" Yes, Whatcanidoforyou?"

'Is the system down?"

"What is your box number?"

"I just want to know if the system is down"

" Please give me your box number"

" I do not know it" (I didn't realise it was written on the terminal)

" What is your telephonenumber?"

I gave them it.

Wait for about five minutes.

" Mrs Nab"

"Almost, is the system down or is there something wrong?"

" We are checking your box now"

Another five minutes.

"Hello"

" Hello, at last. Is there something wrong with my box then?"

" We don't know. The systems down"

My scream was heard the length of the Bus station.

[mouse]

I'm not sure how many others on this forum use Loxinfo's IPstar stellite system for ADSL but unfortunately if you live outside of Bangkok or the CBD of large cities, then this is your only option for hi-speed internet. It's farily reliable but costly and when things go wrong their customers services is laughably bad. Here is an account of my recent experiences. Points 11 and 12 are beyond belief but not surprising in Thailand.

1. April 2004: I contacted Media Magic company, the only Chiang Mai agent for installing IPstar, as it was the only option for ADSL in my suburb. They originally quoted me 20,000 baht to install which I rejected as too expensive and then they eventually lowered this to 8000 baht. I was told that this doesn’t buy the equipment - it is just the installation fee and perpetual leasing of the dish and modem.

2. May 2004: techincian arrives, tells me where he wants to place it in my garden, tells ME to arrange a standing pole for mounting and the leaves. I know nothing about construction, I assume every installation requires this pole so I called them back asking if they knew of a sub-contractor for the job. The responded with a quote of 6000 baht for this simple job. I refused and eventually found a company who did it for only 1000 baht (all it was, was a 2 meter pole set in two feet of concrete!).

3. After installing the system, they then had to return three times in five weeks to replace ‘faulty modems’ before it worked reliably.

4. From June until April 2005 the system worked mostly reliably, all through the rainy season, but sometimes not at the guaranteed 256k.

5. In May 2005 the system become very unstable and frequently dropped out, sometimes up to 10 times a day and occasionally for several hours, this created havoc for my design team uploading sites, and distorted my monthly download allocation (meaning I had to pay more).

6. During this time I contacted support several times, but got tired of being kept on the phone to Bangkok (at my expense) for up to an hour at time while they did diagnostics. In the end it was usually found to be their gateway that was down. Eventually I gave up on this and preferred to patiently wait for it to come back on.

7. Also during this time I kept a log of every time it failed and on most occasions called their local office and asked their staff member (khun Walaiporn) to also log the complaint.

8. At the end of May I returned their invoice unpaid with a faxed letter committing to pay once they had given me a satisfactory answer about their future reliability. Since I am to move house soon I need to decide whether to change to a competitor.

9. The complaint went unanswered and so I submitted the letter directly to their local office and demanded action. They then emailed me saying they couldn’t refund me (I had never actually asked for a refund), but offered 50 free hours of dial up, with no explanation about their faulty gateway.

10. During June the system has returned to normal and is 95% reliable.

11. Since I am moving house I then asked Media Magic to come and transfer the dish to the new premises and again they quoted me 8000 baht! This is an outrageous expense for moving equipment, considering it is the same as the original setup fee (which they justified as insurance against their investment in the equipment). The job took the technician only 3 hours last time so I can calculate they are ripping us off with a rate of more than 2500 baht per hour!!

12. In the meantime my wife has discovered they are running a special offer to new subscribers for 3000 baht, so in the end we simply cancelled the old subscription and signed up for a new one to overcome the problem, but it did involve plenty of unneccessary paperwork.

13. Then yesterday I received a reminder for the outstanding June subs but the accounts department, with prefect bad timing, had screwed up and invoiced me this time for an amount of about 10,000 suggesting that I hadn’t paid for the past three months (the previous reminder stated only 3000 baht).

14. To date, I still have not received any further response from CSLoxinfo despite sending them a copy of this draft.

Considering all of the above, and the fact that this service is 3000 baht a month for only 256k (twice as expensive as conventional ADSL), I really would not recommend this service to anyone. Unfortunately, for those people outside of the main city centres, it is the only option for ADSL and I think CSLoxinfo are taking advantage of this. Our business does web development and this service just isn’t good enough to maintain the standards that our overseas customers demand.

1 ipStar is a Satellite system not to be confused with landlines and ADSL

2 Form reading your story you seem to have contracted with a subcontactor not ipStar. There are many doing this. I have dealt with LoxInfof and never had a problem. Oh I take that back, once they could not acocunt for my payment. When I provided a reciept I received a nice Polo Shirt in the mail

3. Guess you ha some bad luck

4. My speeds exceed the promised limits. Sounds like you system needs adjustment.

5. Insist that an engineeer come to check it out. The ipStar people are good.

6. Why do you htink that you can fix a cloud blocking the signal with a call. Just wait, it will come back

7. no comment

8. Not the way to do business. You pay and then send a polite but firm email. It works, evne in Thailand

9. They have no local offices. They are in Bangkok!

10......

11. Middlemen again

12.Oh your wife finally figured out how to contact eh company directly

13.No comment

14.I do not think that CSLoxinfo is taking advantage. You want a service you pay, servie is broken, you negotiate and get it fixed. Want cheaper service, move to a major city and pay in other ways, smog, noise etc.

But for gosh sakes please stop crying!!