NewsDemon gone Bob?

[DepthCharge]

Hi again folks,

I am currently subscribed to NewsDemon on their unlimited, 20 SSL connection package. For a couple of weeks now I have been reaching speeds of 4000+kB/s on my Virgin Media 20Mb connection.

For the past 48 hours this has dropped to about 450kB/s.

I have checked with VM and I am not being affected by their STM policy, and broadband tests over at http://www.speedtest.net/ are showing consistent 20000+kbps results.

So, does anyone else out there have issues with NewsDemon at the moment?

I would love to hear from anyone using this provider...

[freekie]

I'm not having any problems with newsdemon, still leaching at around 10 Mb/s with only 8 connections.

However, you can never trust your ISP, just because they say that they are not throttling connections, doesn't mean that they aren't. Try changing to a different port

[DepthCharge]

Cheers freekie,

To be honest I have no idea what the hell is going on after speaking to the live support at NewsDemon. First he/she had me trying all three servers across all port variations (even though I explained I had tried this already).

I was then told it made no matter which of the servers I connected to as all could be used with SSL. This was a direct contradiction to what the previous support told me with regards the us-secure one being the only SSL compatible one.

Finally he/she said there WAS a problem and was going to do something to the account (no idea what).

This left me unable to connect for 30 minutes and of course when I could re-connect I had the same naff speeds.

Back to live support and they simply said they would escalate it it the technical department.

So none the wiser at the moment.

[dustout]

the problem is only happening to the SSL server, use the europe one and it'll be faster...or you can keep downloading at 400kb/s like me cause i need SSL

[DepthCharge]

Thanks dustout but having looked into this elsewhere I have found other people, both with my ISP and with other ISP's, who have had similiar issues with NewsDemon.

Their awful tech support that repeated the same suggestion on three occasions, despite being told that suggestion had already been tried multiple times at different times of the day was enough for me to cancel my account.

The fact that this was clearly an issue with NewsDemon and not my ISP and their failure to even acknowledge this issue sent me to Giganews.

THAT was the best decision I have made since getting into newsgroups. Within 10 minutes of registering I was up and running and my speeds are near enough constantly at 2300kB/s on SSL.

Sorry to say it, but in my opinion NewDemon just does not cut it for UK users.

[towerblocks]

Newsdemon are dickheads, I had them before, 5 times i spoke to live support about a port problem, I couldn't connect on any other port besides 119, 5 times i got the the problem has been fixed please give it some time for our servers to update, And nothing... never got fixed, I also asked was there servers based in the UK and they said yes, But when i did a tracert to there server address it should 2 hops to london and the rest to amsterdam, So in all just lies, Don't go with them.

[dustout]

it seemed like they fixed it, i was downloading at about 2mb/s (still pretty slow but faster than yesterday) but now i'm downloading at 600kb/s...a disgraceful speed for a usenet provider

[DepthCharge]

Well I hate to start a topic of query and not come back to it once in awhile even once the issue is apparently sorted - so my thanks to you both for taking the time out to give your opinions.

I do have to say that although NewsDemon seem to offer a great service, the blatant lack of personal tech-support was the killer for me. I know those jobs can be bloody tough but there is no excuse for speaking to three separate techs who all speel the same scripted nonsense despite an in-depth synopsis of the problem at all stages.

There does definitely seem to be a problem with UK access (I can only speak of my own experiences after all) across several ISP's and it would only have taken a single tech to say "Yes we do have an issue and we are working on it" to have me hang about for a bit for a solution.

But instead I got a scripted "Do this, do that and goodbye" response.

Far, far from a satisfying result to say the least.

Nice to catch you by the way towerblocks, you do an amazing job on the NZB listings sir!

[timmy67]

this mob are robbers
my advice to anyone thinking of going with news demon DONT