WiFi Spark - Fowey HC Broadband

[Judders]

After over a week onboard we decided we'd like to catch up with the Olympics so subscribed to 24 hours of WiFi Spark at £8.80) for 24 hours WiFi. With the weather coming in we felt it best to get up river and make plans for a day below.

Sadly there is barely enough band width for our money to write a post on a mainly text scuttlebutt, much less watch any Olympic coverage.

The telephone helpline is closed and despite being umber one in the queue for to leave a message, I cant do that either.

I can of course demand a refund by email and in the grand schme of things, it is not a great deal of money (hell, I just paid a tenner for a slow late water taxi) but I thought it best to psot here in case any other scuttlebutters were thinking of making the same error.

As it goes I beleive Falmouth Harbour Commisioners have the same "service".

Its not gone well WiFi wise this week as we berhted at Mylor Yacht Harbour on account of their free broadband allowing us to watch the opening cermony whilst baby sitting for soem friends and it turns out their bandwidth doesnt reach the outer end of the visitors pontoon!

Still; at least the scenary is stunning, the sailing excellen and the beer wonderful; and that is what you really go on a summer cruise for.

 

[Dockhead]

Yes, and to add insult to injury, no mobile phone service (which I can access, at least) works in Fowey Harbour. I spent three days there a couple of weeks ago and suffered total connectivity withdrawal It was kind of cool, actually, although my colleagues back in the office were not pleased.

 

[sarabande]

that's strange. I have always thought that Wifi Spark had a very good support section. Certainly my experience has always shown that.

 

[Cardo]

I have to say I'm not particularly impressed with Wifi Spark at Universal Marina. It used to work really well, however it was completely open and never asked for a password. They seem to have "fixed" it and you now have to log in with the details provided by the marina, but the connection is completely rubbish. The signal keeps dropping out every few minutes and it then asks for the login details again to get back on. Completely unuseable. It may have been a one off bad weekend, so I'll have to see what it's like this coming weekend. If it's still rubbish, I guess I'll have to see what their support is like.

 

[flawed_logic]

pants

Wifi spark are awful in terms of bandwidth, i'm stuck in Brixham Marina at the moment and it's totally useless, i've had to resort to using a 3G dongle ..... and it's raining ... again!!!

 

[Ex-SolentBoy]

Its not gone well WiFi wise this week as we berhted at Mylor Yacht Harbour on account of their free broadband allowing us to watch the opening cermony whilst baby sitting for soem friends and it turns out their bandwidth doesnt reach the outer end of the visitors pontoon!

Still; at least the scenary is stunning, the sailing excellen and the beer wonderful; and that is what you really go on a summer cruise for.

Mylor wifi is a bit unpredictable. However, I wouldn't bother asking for a change of berth. Even right next to the transmitter with a full strength signal it is not fast enough for Iplayer.

 

[Garold]

If you email them and let them know about your problems then at least they have the opportunity to respond.

And it may improve things for the rest of us.

cheers

Garold

Ps. I'm not sure that they can easily respond to unspecified service problems listed on the forum.

 

[WiFiSPARK]

After over a week onboard we decided we'd like to catch up with the Olympics so subscribed to 24 hours of WiFi Spark at £8.80) for 24 hours WiFi. With the weather coming in we felt it best to get up river and make plans for a day below.

Sadly there is barely enough band width for our money to write a post on a mainly text scuttlebutt, much less watch any Olympic coverage.

The telephone helpline is closed and despite being umber one in the queue for to leave a message, I cant do that either.

I can of course demand a refund by email and in the grand schme of things, it is not a great deal of money (hell, I just paid a tenner for a slow late water taxi) but I thought it best to psot here in case any other scuttlebutters were thinking of making the same error.

As it goes I beleive Falmouth Harbour Commisioners have the same "service".

Its not gone well WiFi wise this week as we berhted at Mylor Yacht Harbour on account of their free broadband allowing us to watch the opening cermony whilst baby sitting for soem friends and it turns out their bandwidth doesnt reach the outer end of the visitors pontoon!

Still; at least the scenary is stunning, the sailing excellen and the beer wonderful; and that is what you really go on a summer cruise for.

Hi Judders. As you can see we are new to the forum but after seeing your post, felt it necessary to register and say sorry for the WiFi service you experienced at Fowey. This is certainly not what we like to hear.

I am also concerned that you were unable to get through to our helpdesk. Just to confirm our contact details for our 24/7 UK Helpdesk is 0844 848 9555. We also have a standard line number which will work out cheaper when calling from mobiles which is 01626 831 800.You will then need to push option 1 for Technical Support. Alternatively email support@wifispark.com. Over 90% of our technical support issues are resolved on the first call.

If you have a spare moment, I would very much like to hear from you either through the forum or directly as I have a few questions.

1. Where abouts were you located at Fowey?
2. What was your signal strength like?
3. Were you able to run an internet speed test from www.speedtest.com or similar?
4. What was the login username that you were using?
5. What type of device and operating system were you using?

Our hotspots limit each of our users to approximately 1Mbps download speed but this can vary depending on the area that you are connecting from, the quality of the signal and also how far the marina/venue is from the BT Exchange. We limit each each user to 1Mbps to prevent any one person from taking all the bandwidth. This speed is fine for general browsing, email and small amounts of video but it would certainly struggle with HD video. Where possible, we would always recommend that you download the video to your computer first. BBC Iplayer Desktop would allow you to do this but this is of course not suitable if you are watching the Olympics Live.

Marinas can sometimes be effected by radio interference as well, which can change on a regular basis. We have remote access to all our equipment so in the event of an issue with interference, we can diagnose this over the phone with the customer and make the relevant changes. We also remotely monitor our sites so if there is a problem we fix it as quickly as possible and hopefully before the end user even notices!

Please do contact us with your login username so that we can see if there were any issues with your account and credit you accordingly.

Do let me know if there are any other questions about the service. This is our first of hopefully many more posts in our quest to delivering a good service!

All the best, Oliver

 

[HinewaisMan]

Spectrum vs WiFi Spark customer service - no contest!

Way to go, Oliver of WiFi Spark! That’s the way to address consumer gripes!

As most people did here in Ipswich, I eventually gave up with Spectrum and went dongle – we'd reached the point where we’d rather pay dongle rates than endure the “service” Spectrum supplied. OK, it’s a free service provided by the marina, but we still contribute to the cost through our mooring fees.

(In fact, it was so bad that one (minor contributing) factor for not moving the boat to Brighton was that they are stitched up by Spectrum).

To be fair, the service at Ipswich is now way better, but I still have a very deep bad taste left in my mouth.

That bad taste was because every time you rang Spectrum to report a problem with their “service” we had to pay for the call. That could be two or three times a week and from aboard, that has to be by mobile.

Of course, Spectrum made sure that you were kept holding for several minutes listening to appalling Pearl & Dean type music while they told you how important your call was to them.

At an average call cost for me of £4.00 a time it really was taking the p!ss.

 

[Seajet]

Ah Judders I vaguely remember similar days with SWIMBO Mk 1, but it's all written in Latin now.

 

[Carolwildbird]

Just to add a counterbalance.. I'm using wifi spark at hythe marina village (subscribed, as you did Judders, to watch the Olympics). Its working well most of the time.. even live streaming. Maybe not TV quality most of the time,, but sufficient to watch the events...

 

[pessimist]

I hate to speak up in defence of a competitor but here goes -

All wifi sites have to allow for contention from many users. In general they are not suitable for live video streaming. They are designed to allow general browsing and email. Small video downloads are o.k. but live streaming of events such as the Olympics are a no no. Just imagine 10, 20 or more users all streaming different events. Aint gonna work.

We make these restrictions clear in our terms and conditions and I'm sure Spark do too.