JL
Jarred L
1 reviews | Active since Aug 2020
14 Aug 2020, 16:12
Oh. My. Garden.
By far the most customer-focused ISP ever. Had issues with Vumatel not releasing my line for them to provide service over it, but Greg helpfully kept me updated every step of the way and pushed Vumatel to get their ******* together.
While there are still a few kinks to iron out, such as their network routing me through Johannesburg while I am based in Cape Town, their technical support is quick to answer calls and emails even at 4pm on a Friday afternoon.
Would definitely recommend if you're a fan of customer support and efficient service.
Helpful (0)
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Replies (3)
BitCo's replyOfficial
14 Aug 2020, 16:37Good day Jarred
Thank you for the wonderful compliment. It is always appreciated.
We will make sure to pass the message along to all parties involved.
Kind regards,
Morne Minnaar
Customer Service Manager
Thank you for the wonderful compliment. It is always appreciated.
We will make sure to pass the message along to all parties involved.
Kind regards,
Morne Minnaar
Customer Service Manager
BitCo's reply14 Aug 2020, 16:37
Official
Good day Jarred
Thank you for the wonderful compliment. It is always appreciated.
We will make sure to pass the message along to all parties involved.
Kind regards,
Morne Minnaar
Customer Service Manager
Thank you for the wonderful compliment. It is always appreciated.
We will make sure to pass the message along to all parties involved.
Kind regards,
Morne Minnaar
Customer Service Manager
JL
Jarred L's updateReviewer Update
27 Nov 2020, 18:21Review after 3 months of usage:
The positive:
The negatives:
The positive:
- Their support is still amazing. Always someone to answer the phone within 5 minutes, you always get sent to the right person in the right department, and your issue will always be handled by the same person to avoid misunderstanding between support personnel and the issue at hand. Straight to the point support.
The negatives:
- Regarding their quick and efficient support, their answers are very vague.
A recent example (explained further down this paragraph) was when I asked what the issue was regarding no internet connection. The answer I got was that Vumatel had an issue with their Active Ethernet customers in the entire Cape Town area. This turned out not to be a Vumatel issue, but rather an issue with Bitco's network on Vumatel. Vumatel had confirmed that my line was active and a connection could be established between them and my premises equipment through tests that they had me visually confirm on my end, leaving the issue being on Bitco.
Calling Bitco after my call with Vumatel to let them know that there is no issue with my line led to them still explaining that Vumatel is having issues with their entire Cape Town Active Ethernet network. I knew this was false by asking my neighbor if their internet was down, which it was not. - They do not make use of official channels when raising issues with infrastructure providers.
I will be continue my use of the recent Bitco-Vumatel issue in this explanation:
When I had called Vumatel back to say that Bitco is denying that it is on their side and have said that they have raised an escalation and are working together with the Vumatel CPT NOC team, I was told by the Vumatel support agent that there have not been any issues raised for Cape Town. This was confirmed by a Cape Town NOC manager from Vumatel. I was then requested to get an issue request ticket number from Bitco so that Vumatel can investigate further, stating that they are required to give issue ticket references between them and Vumatel to a customer if requested.
Upon calling Bitco support, I was told that they (Bitco) are not allowed to give out any communication information between them and Vumatel. What I did get was a screenshot of an email with all names redacted, no contact details found, and no ticket reference number. After more irritation to the (very professional) tech from Bitco, I finally managed to get more than "we are not allowed to give out any communication information". I was told that they do not make use of official channels when communicating with the NOC support team. The most answer that they can give you is that there is an issue with *** provider, but never being able to explain what the issue is, nor allowing you to follow up with said provider about the issue - since they don't know what you're talking about. - The routing.
What a nightmare. Everything, absolutely everything, that you do on the internet first has to go through their Johannesburg gateway before getting to it's location. This is great if you live in Johannesburg, as that's how it should be. As a Cape Town client, however, it is less than optimal. Latencies to locally hosted servers (Cape Town) are 33ms, while to Johannesburg-hosted servers it's the regular 17ms. Not much of an issue, but as soon as you go overseas latencies increase by minimum 20ms as opposed to local routing.
London latencies went from 144ms (another provider with local gateways) to 168ms (Bitco).
New York went from 230ms to 258ms.
The list goes on. At the higher latencies a 20ms reduction is visibly noticeable, especially when doing latency intensive tasks like gaming.
This is NOT made aware to you as a client before signing up. - Downtime
I've experienced connectivity drop every day for around 10 minutes at 11pm-12am. I ignore it as we very rarely use the connection from those times.
Around twice every 2 weeks - it seems to occur at random and has no pattern - we lose connectivity for around 10 minutes as well during the day. It could be a weekday, it could be a weekend, it could be a public holiday. It's definitely annoying when you want to use the internet in the middle of the day and you run into this weird hiccup out of nowhere.
All connectivity is lost during these times. Absolutely no internet connection what-so-ever. - Speed
Plan: 1000/100 on Vumatel Trenched.
Tests to back up claims (Tests performed hardlined into router with 0 other devices on the network, router used to simulate a real-world application):
- Cape Town - Cape Town (RSAWEB): Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
- Cape Town - Cape Town (Vox Telecom): Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
- Cape Town - Cape Town (Telkom SA (SAIX)): Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
- Cape Town - Cape Town (Web Squad): Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
- Cape Town - Johannesburg (Rain): Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
- Cape Town - Johannesburg (Vodacom): Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
As can be seen, speeds are fast, but are well far from the 1000mbit mark - with the exception of the Vodacom speedtest. As I'm in Cape Town, the Cape Town results should take more of the focus. The highest result achieved was 726 mbit.
My gigabit plan with my previous ISP - which I left for support reasons - had managed to easily give me 900-950 mbit every speedtest. This leaves bitco with an entire 200mbit connection disadvantage. To put that into perspective, that's an entire R1 300/pm package.
To summarize:
DO think of Bitco if you are looking for an ISP in Johannesburg.
DO think for Bitco if you are a casual user that will be using their lower-tier plans.
DO think of Bitco if you love human support.
DO NOT think of Bitco if you play online games - especially if there are only overseas servers: GTA V, Valorant, and PUBG are the ones that I play. Ping is high and spikes are very bothersome.
DO NOT think of Bitco if you want a Gigabit connection (cannot comment on their lower plans).
DO NOT think of Bitco if you stay up late at night playing games (I presume the connection drops would end up being very annoying).
After 3 months of using them, I am planning to cancel them after I give my 1 month notice.
JL
Jarred L's update27 Nov 2020, 18:21
Reviewer Update
Review after 3 months of usage:
The positive:
The negatives:
The positive:
- Their support is still amazing. Always someone to answer the phone within 5 minutes, you always get sent to the right person in the right department, and your issue will always be handled by the same person to avoid misunderstanding between support personnel and the issue at hand. Straight to the point support.
The negatives:
- Regarding their quick and efficient support, their answers are very vague.
A recent example (explained further down this paragraph) was when I asked what the issue was regarding no internet connection. The answer I got was that Vumatel had an issue with their Active Ethernet customers in the entire Cape Town area. This turned out not to be a Vumatel issue, but rather an issue with Bitco's network on Vumatel. Vumatel had confirmed that my line was active and a connection could be established between them and my premises equipment through tests that they had me visually confirm on my end, leaving the issue being on Bitco.
Calling Bitco after my call with Vumatel to let them know that there is no issue with my line led to them still explaining that Vumatel is having issues with their entire Cape Town Active Ethernet network. I knew this was false by asking my neighbor if their internet was down, which it was not. - They do not make use of official channels when raising issues with infrastructure providers.
I will be continue my use of the recent Bitco-Vumatel issue in this explanation:
When I had called Vumatel back to say that Bitco is denying that it is on their side and have said that they have raised an escalation and are working together with the Vumatel CPT NOC team, I was told by the Vumatel support agent that there have not been any issues raised for Cape Town. This was confirmed by a Cape Town NOC manager from Vumatel. I was then requested to get an issue request ticket number from Bitco so that Vumatel can investigate further, stating that they are required to give issue ticket references between them and Vumatel to a customer if requested.
Upon calling Bitco support, I was told that they (Bitco) are not allowed to give out any communication information between them and Vumatel. What I did get was a screenshot of an email with all names redacted, no contact details found, and no ticket reference number. After more irritation to the (very professional) tech from Bitco, I finally managed to get more than "we are not allowed to give out any communication information". I was told that they do not make use of official channels when communicating with the NOC support team. The most answer that they can give you is that there is an issue with *** provider, but never being able to explain what the issue is, nor allowing you to follow up with said provider about the issue - since they don't know what you're talking about. - The routing.
What a nightmare. Everything, absolutely everything, that you do on the internet first has to go through their Johannesburg gateway before getting to it's location. This is great if you live in Johannesburg, as that's how it should be. As a Cape Town client, however, it is less than optimal. Latencies to locally hosted servers (Cape Town) are 33ms, while to Johannesburg-hosted servers it's the regular 17ms. Not much of an issue, but as soon as you go overseas latencies increase by minimum 20ms as opposed to local routing.
London latencies went from 144ms (another provider with local gateways) to 168ms (Bitco).
New York went from 230ms to 258ms.
The list goes on. At the higher latencies a 20ms reduction is visibly noticeable, especially when doing latency intensive tasks like gaming.
This is NOT made aware to you as a client before signing up. - Downtime
I've experienced connectivity drop every day for around 10 minutes at 11pm-12am. I ignore it as we very rarely use the connection from those times.
Around twice every 2 weeks - it seems to occur at random and has no pattern - we lose connectivity for around 10 minutes as well during the day. It could be a weekday, it could be a weekend, it could be a public holiday. It's definitely annoying when you want to use the internet in the middle of the day and you run into this weird hiccup out of nowhere.
All connectivity is lost during these times. Absolutely no internet connection what-so-ever. - Speed
Plan: 1000/100 on Vumatel Trenched.
Tests to back up claims (Tests performed hardlined into router with 0 other devices on the network, router used to simulate a real-world application):
- Cape Town - Cape Town (RSAWEB): Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
- Cape Town - Cape Town (Vox Telecom): Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
- Cape Town - Cape Town (Telkom SA (SAIX)): Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
- Cape Town - Cape Town (Web Squad): Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
- Cape Town - Johannesburg (Rain): Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
- Cape Town - Johannesburg (Vodacom): Speedtest by Ookla - The Global Broadband Speed Test
As can be seen, speeds are fast, but are well far from the 1000mbit mark - with the exception of the Vodacom speedtest. As I'm in Cape Town, the Cape Town results should take more of the focus. The highest result achieved was 726 mbit.
My gigabit plan with my previous ISP - which I left for support reasons - had managed to easily give me 900-950 mbit every speedtest. This leaves bitco with an entire 200mbit connection disadvantage. To put that into perspective, that's an entire R1 300/pm package.
To summarize:
DO think of Bitco if you are looking for an ISP in Johannesburg.
DO think for Bitco if you are a casual user that will be using their lower-tier plans.
DO think of Bitco if you love human support.
DO NOT think of Bitco if you play online games - especially if there are only overseas servers: GTA V, Valorant, and PUBG are the ones that I play. Ping is high and spikes are very bothersome.
DO NOT think of Bitco if you want a Gigabit connection (cannot comment on their lower plans).
DO NOT think of Bitco if you stay up late at night playing games (I presume the connection drops would end up being very annoying).
After 3 months of using them, I am planning to cancel them after I give my 1 month notice.
BitCo's replyOfficial
27 Nov 2020, 19:11Good evening Jarred,
Thank you for your very detailed review.
We appreciate you taking the time and effort.
We are going to look into each aspect that you have raised and provide you with feedback accordingly.
Kind regards,
Jessica Schluter
Customer Service Manager
Thank you for your very detailed review.
We appreciate you taking the time and effort.
We are going to look into each aspect that you have raised and provide you with feedback accordingly.
Kind regards,
Jessica Schluter
Customer Service Manager
BitCo's reply27 Nov 2020, 19:11
Official
Good evening Jarred,
Thank you for your very detailed review.
We appreciate you taking the time and effort.
We are going to look into each aspect that you have raised and provide you with feedback accordingly.
Kind regards,
Jessica Schluter
Customer Service Manager
Thank you for your very detailed review.
We appreciate you taking the time and effort.
We are going to look into each aspect that you have raised and provide you with feedback accordingly.
Kind regards,
Jessica Schluter
Customer Service Manager