Announcement for Giganews and NewsDemon Users, Please Read

[unoriginal]

Heh, all these years I just figured Astra was EU based. Ah well.

Astraweb's home office is in Singapore, and their server farms are located in San Diego and Amsterdam. I think the company is also still registered in Singapore, although this could easily change. (Usenet-news.net, owned by a Swede, has changed its official ("on paper") country of domicile several times already)

I can understand the confusion though. It's been a long time since Astraweb displayed their mailing address on the website. Although not operating under US DMCA law, Singapore is no pushover when it comes to copyright enforcement. The country has often been described as a police state with very tough laws in general, and I seem to recall one or two people even going to jail for ordinary file sharing.

Didn't know that Astraweb was based in Singapore and I guess this shows it: http://www.who.is/domain_archive-net/astraweb.net/

But their US server farm is definitely in San Jose as a traceroute shows:

7ae-2-2.ebr3.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.69.132.9)
ae-73-73.csw2.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.69.134.230)
ae-2-79.edge8.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.68.18.84)
SEARCHTECH.edge8.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.53.30.1420
unknown.sj.astraweb.com (216.151.153.70)

[c0ld]

Giga's support answers tickets within 10 minutes usually, whereas the last three or four times I've sent tickets to Astra (this week included), they've taken between 2 and 5 DAYS to reply. I last posted Astra and Giga tickets (at the same time) on Tuesday... Giga replied 5 mins later. Astra still haven't gotten back to me.

It's ppl like you that drive up prices for the rest of us. Usenet isn't complicated, stop bothering the company with pointless support calls. The more money they spend dealing with newbs that needing constant hand holding, the less money they have for the actual service. Please stick with Giganews.

[RainmakerRaw]

Giga's support answers tickets within 10 minutes usually, whereas the last three or four times I've sent tickets to Astra (this week included), they've taken between 2 and 5 DAYS to reply. I last posted Astra and Giga tickets (at the same time) on Tuesday... Giga replied 5 mins later. Astra still haven't gotten back to me.

It's ppl like you that drive up prices for the rest of us. Usenet isn't complicated, stop bothering the company with pointless support calls. The more money they spend dealing with newbs that needing constant hand holding, the less money they have for the actual service. Please stick with Giganews.

LOL How very presumptuous of you. I've been using Usenet for years; my support tickets were very much technically related and necessary. In Astra's case, they were barely managing to provide me with 5% of my line's bandwidth. After much to-and-fro their main man replied to confirm the routing between their backend and my ISP had been turned off, and they were working to restore it. In Giga's case, I was asking whether they used signed SSL certificates or self-signed ones, given that my ISP is now using DPI on an anti-file-sharing drive. Self-signed certs make DPI a trivial process, whereas authenticated ones from a Trusted Authority don't. Usenet isn't complicated, I agree. But providing a good service apparently is, because it's in short supply. I don't see how asking relevant questions (for... let me think... only the second time in the last six or so years?) is driving your prices up.

Before you re-quote me as saying "the last three of four times I've sent tickets to Astra", they were on the same billing related issue whereby Astra failed to re-bill me, cut my service, and didn't reply to my tickets for four and five days at a time. Eventually I'd been without proper Usenet access for a fortnight, which is when I migrated to Giga. So yes, I'll be sticking with Giga for now and so long as they're not taking almost a week to reply to any tickets I have genuine need to send, I'll keep paying my $19.99.

You can have your soap box back now.

[c0ld]

they were on the same billing related issue whereby Astra failed to re-bill me, cut my service, and didn't reply to my tickets for four and five days at a time. Eventually I'd been without proper Usenet access for a fortnight, which is when I migrated to Giga.

Took you long enough to get the hint. Please don't come back.

[RainmakerRaw]

they were on the same billing related issue whereby Astra failed to re-bill me, cut my service, and didn't reply to my tickets for four and five days at a time. Eventually I'd been without proper Usenet access for a fortnight, which is when I migrated to Giga.

Took you long enough to get the hint. Please don't come back.

LOL Were you born a plank or are you just having a bad day? I see no particular reason why you'd decide to be hostile towards me for the sake of it. Or are you simply part of the Astraweb Does No Wrong fanclub? I've had written apologies from Astra's owner acknowledging the issues I've had with them, I don't see why he/they need you to be all gung ho on their behalf.

[c0ld]

I see no particular reason why you'd decide to be hostile towards me for the sake of it.

Welcome to the Internet.

I've had written apologies from Astra's owner

Haha, classic.

Hey guise I had a letter from insurance company trying to sell me policy. Normally I wouldn't bother, but this was signed by the President of the company!!1 I am so special to them.

[Skiz]

they were on the same billing related issue whereby Astra failed to re-bill me, cut my service, and didn't reply to my tickets for four and five days at a time. Eventually I'd been without proper Usenet access for a fortnight, which is when I migrated to Giga.

Took you long enough to get the hint. Please don't come back.

Take a note here kids:

Never admit you're wrong. If in a proper discussion, cut/paste and answer only the very weakest part of your "opponent's" arguments, thus "pwning" him/her.

@RainmakerRaw - You'd be doing yourself a favor to ignore her like most of the board does. She's a twat with sand in her twat.

[c0ld]

Oh look, Skiz is here to whiteknight a fellow Giganews mug, again. RainmakerRaw probably just made a couple of support tickets here to ask for help.

[RainmakerRaw]

LOL I've better things to do with my day than shoot the breeze with someone mid-PMS just looking to moan. This might be 'teh internetz' but I'm afraid I left the under 16s pissing contests behind a couple of decades ago. Enjoy the rest of your day, I know I will. Toodle pip.

[jaymmmmmm]

This is getting as tedious as Xbox 360 vs PS3 debates.

Yes, astraweb is almost half the price of giganews but giganews does have much better customer service and in general is much more reliable as a service than astraweb, is that worth paying a extra $9 a month for that? Not in my opinion but that's up to the user to decide if it's worth that to them. Astraweb fanboys who call giganews users losers or whatever for paying what they pay for giganews are sad, how does it effect you? It doesn't one bit, it's their money, get over it. This is from someone who uses astraweb.