When Woosh released it's Woosh broadband Orbit Flatrate plan it gathered a large number of customers in a very small window of time. No other company in the market was offering such a plan. Unlimited Data, Unlimited Download Speed, while upload speed was capped at 128K(and yes rest of the world - feel free to laugh at this). But Woosh, slowly began to reneg on their plan, changing throttling guidelines and then finally in early October killing the service completely.

Killing? Maybe a strong word. The service still exists, but Woosh Broadband has been very methodically and very deliberately throttling international traffic on their orbit flat rate plan back to speeds achievable with dialup internet. No explanation was offered to the thousand or more customers on this plan, the speed was just cut back. When contacted woosh broadband maintained that there was an "unknown network issue" with users on the flatrate plan, yet the network status page reported no problems.

Some digging revealed that woosh broadband had a number of users on their Orbit flat rate plan who were using 'higher than normal' levels of internet, so the company had to limit the bandwidth pool to protect it's customers. There are a number of issues here. Firstly - those who were using high amounts of data were perfectly entitled too. They signed up to the woosh broadband Orbit flat rate plan which offered unlimited downloads at the highest speed possible. Secondly, 'protecting it's customers' seemed to involve destroying their online experience, and in many cases their ability to operate a business. It's no more protection than stealing my car 'protects' me from crashing it.

As if the issue itself wasn't serious enough, Woosh Broadband decided to accentuate the problem by misleading, and outright lying to it's customers. Everything from Telecom's bandwidth(Woosh broadbands supplier) to international gateways to "unknown errors" were sited as likely causes to the problem, and the nature of the issue changed depending on which Woosh customer service(what a great oxymoron) operative you got. Woosh broadband customer support offered two solutions - change plan, or deal with the problem until it was resolved.

The objective of the throttling was to get people to change from the Woosh Broadband Orbit Flat rate plan to Orbit 5 or Orbit 10 plans, which would charge the user for additional data usage. Many users have indicated that had Woosh had the decency to contact them and ask them they would have been happy to make the switch, but as they were instead railroaded into changing, and still charged for a substandard service, they are more likely to change provider than plan.

Woosh Broadbands response to the customer complaints seems to be one of unbelievable apathy. They seem convinced that their contract allows them to provide the plan at whatever speed they want. The contract however quite clearly states that Woosh Broadband will "do our best to provide the Services to a high standard...". In addition all Contracts in New Zealand are over-ruled by the Consumer Guarantees Act, which requires products to be "fit for the intended purpose", "match the description given" and be "of acceptable quality". The service that Woosh Broadband customers have received during October quite clearly is not of acceptable quality, is not fit for the intended purpose and does not match the description of "unlimited download speeds" and "unlimited data usage".

Not only has Woosh broadband ripped off an incredible number of it's customers, but they also seem to be quite apathetic about the fact.

If you are a Woosh Broadband customer who has been effected by Woosh's poor service and product, please let your voice be heard in The geekzone forum or GP Forums.

And better still, vote with your feet and move to another provider.

¶ 5:17 AM