My NewsDemon Unlimited access says 502 Access Denied (Download Cap Hit)

Hi everybody,

My NewsDemon Unlimited access says "11/22/2011 8:11:22 AM Unable to authenticate at server: NewsDemon (502 Access Denied (Download Cap Hit))."

I contacted Support and they quickly fixed my problem however every connection is capped at 50KB/s !!!
I introduced NewsDemon to 3 of my friends, they registered an account, I borrowed their unlimited account and after a few weeks all of them reach Download Cap Hit too!!!

Have anyone experienced this ???

I know it's cheap but anyway it's dishonest to say an capped access is unlimited access, perhaps NewsDemon should inform users that we are limited ***GB over a month and let the users decide whether they want to choose NewsDemon or not

Should I go with GigaNews or NewsHosting?

Haha more crap from a shit company. Stay away from newsdemon because of this crap. I would stay right away from all highwinds personally.

By the way about how much did you download...maybe we can figure out what there cap is. How fast is your internet?

NewsDemon has had a nasty reputation of throttling *unlimited* accounts of users who exceeded their secret limit - while repeatedly denying that anyone was ever being throttled - but I've not seen complaints about this since about 3 years ago, when this underhanded practice was widespread and many people were complaining about Newsdemon.

But are you saying that there are 4 people sharing one unlimited account? (If you want to do that, I'd suggest one of the Dutch providers that allows account sharing.)

@hdjunky: I can't remember how much I download, sometimes I download all days and night, sometimes I don't download anything in a whole month. My speed is only 30 Mpbs, whereas most of my friends in Japan got 200Mbps they use GigaNews for years without any problem or limited cap.

@zot: 1 account for each one of us, we don't share. All account bought from commission link here. I borrowed my friend's acct because mine is capped. But I realize not only mine is capped but also my friends too.

I will be back to GigaNews soon, don't know where else to go

Do you know that Supernews is Giganews at a third of the price? Same exact retention, completion, and run by the same company. (but unlike Giganews, Supernews has never lied about its retention)

Also, I have never seen a complaint about Astraweb throttling high-use customers.

Although I must admit that seeing the message "502 Access Denied (Download Cap Hit)" could be considered a smoking gun, how can you be sure that since getting the problem "fixed" that it is Newsdemon, rather than your ISP (or the line in between) that is responsible for the slow speeds? Are all 4 of you using the same cable or DSL company?

BTW, it seemed that only the NewsDemon users who were paying the $10 or $11/month discount price were ever throttled. Of customers paying the full price -- which at the time was $24 or $25/month for the same exact service -- none ever reported being throttled.

Also, Newsdemon resells Highwinds, which for the last year or so has had the worst overall completion of any major back-end provider.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zot

BTW, it seemed that only the NewsDemon users who were paying the $10 or $11/month discount price were ever throttled. Of customers paying the full price -- which at the time was $24 or $25/month for the same exact service -- none ever reported being throttled.

Also, Newsdemon resells Highwinds, which for the last year or so has had the worst overall completion of any major back-end provider.

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Avoid newsdemon, I am now totally regretting my subscription with them. The speed is good only if you use it at a light level & once you get to medium (not even heavy) use the speed is slowed down. Suddenly they change their connections to certain groups without notice & their support is absolute crap.

Since writing those last posts, I've seen very many complaints from Thundernews customers who report being throttled on "unlimited" accounts - and it should be noted that Thundernews is the exact same company as NewsDemon.

This seems to be the business strategy of NewsDemon/Thundernews for many years:

1. offer amazing price specials on "unlimited" usenet, and get 'viral' publicity and an enormous flood of signups.
2. Throttle everyone who uses too much,
3. Lie about throttling anyone and blame the slow speeds on the customer's internet provider.
4. If throttled customer continues downloading, then cancel account and refuse all further communication.
5. Pocket the unrefunded remainder of the month for evicted bandwidth hogs.
6. Watch and smile as competitors are forced to raise their prices, since they end up getting all the hungry users.
7. Keep as customers all the people who barely use any bandwidth
8. ... and laugh all the way to the bank.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zot

This seems to be the business strategy of NewsDemon/Thundernews for many years:

1. offer amazing price specials on "unlimited" usenet, and get 'viral' publicity and an enormous flood of signups.
2. Throttle everyone who uses too much,
3. Lie about throttling anyone and blame the slow speeds on the customer's internet provider.
4. If throttled customer continues downloading, then cancel account and refuse all further communication.
5. Pocket the unrefunded remainder of the month for evicted bandwidth hogs.
6. Watch and smile as competitors are forced to raise their prices, since they end up getting all the hungry users.
7. Keep as customers all the people who barely use any bandwidth
8. ... and laugh all the way to the bank.

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aka the free market

i'm new to usenet, was using torrent, but I recently got an account from theusenet (which I now understand is also a highwinds relesser) so was wary after reading about highwinds and other relessers, but so far i have not been throttled or anything (that i can tell yet).

I got this recently, I was at this:

Bandwidth:
Total: 931.7 G
Today: 101.9 G
This week: 880.9 G
This month: 931.7 G

I contacted someone on live chat and they blatantly told me they were a third party hired to respond to support questions and they couldn't tell me what it is set at just that she "refreshed" my account.

I've been with usenetserver for a while now without any problems averaging 4.5MB/s for maybe 6 months...decided to give newsdemon a try as a backup and so far not so good...tsk tsk

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tripflex

I've been with usenetserver for a while now without any problems averaging 4.5MB/s for maybe 6 months...decided to give newsdemon a try as a backup and so far not so good...tsk tsk

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Both Usenetserver and Newsdemon are Highwinds resellers, so it makes no sense to have one as a backup to the other, as any missing articles (as Highwinds is notorious for) will be missing from both.

I'd normally recommend for people to switch to a non-Highwinds server, such as Ngroups or Astraweb, but since you say you were happy with UNS (apparently without needing an extra block-account fill server) I'll leave it at that.

Yeah but the service with usenetserver has been almost perfect, whereas newsdemon has been nothing but problems. Cancelled account.