Hello everyone.
This is my review about Hathway If you are thinking about moving to Hathway for your internet needs, I strongly suggest you think again because if you do move to Hathway, you will deeply regret it. This company went from good to okay and okay to bad. Now, it has gone from bad to worse.
Initially, this company was good and I liked it. I had a 512 KBPS unlimited plan and things were fine. That was until one day in Jan 2011, when I suddenly received a message from Hathway that "your internet speed has been downgraded". Apparently, I had crossed the "fair usage limit" which was a measly 10 GB. But that was not what made me angry. What made me angry was that these losers did not even inform me of this change in their plan. It was an "unlimited" plan with no limits or FUP until October, and then it was changed. When I renewed my subscription with Hathway, the dogs didn’t even inform me that the plan had been changed. What’s worse, these cheaters add excess MB to your download usage. I’ve calculated this. On average, the cheats add an excess 50-100 MB to your download usage. That’s really smart! Every month, they save about 2 GB and my FUP is only 10 GB.
Still, I stuck around with Hathway because they were stable and reliable. Then, they introduced a new system, and that’s when this company became worse. They claimed that this new system would be more secure. In reality, this system is a big pain in the neck. In this new system, you have to login before you can connect to the net(earlier it was automatic). Right from day 1, there have been problems. Here are a few error messages I come across:
Server not found - Firefox can’t find the server at login.hathway.com(most of the time, I come across this error)
Error - User already logged in
The connection has timed out
Sometimes, when I try to login, I find myself in someone else’s account! This has already happened twice. I logged into accounts belonging to one "HITESH PANDYA" and "KAVITA".
The net speeds are not as good as they used to be. I remember a time when I used to get 55 kbps. Now, I get anything between 18 kbps and 40 kbps. However, the biggest problem is reliability, or the lack of it. If you are surfing the web or are on Skype, you want stability. You don’t want the internet to disconnect at random moments. That’s what happens with Hathway. I have lost count of the number of times, the net has dropped. It’s okay and tolerable if the net drops once in a while or even once in a day. But not multiple times in a day. It dropped way too many times this Sunday(the only day in the week when you get unlimited download).
Hathway’s customer service is a big joke. When you call Hathway’s amazing customer service, you will be listening to a song for 10 minutes(I listened to Bryan Adams songs on many occasions - "Here I Am" was one of them). If you are lucky, someone might pick up the phone and answer. But, you won’t be lucky first time. Probably on the third or fourth attempt. Of course, I will give credit where it is due. The Hathway employees are polite and helpful.
What really pains me is the fact that this pathetic company is among the top ISPs in Mumbai. A few months back, this third-class company put an ad in a leading newspaper. It went like this: "Internet users have voted us as one of the most trusted and reliable ISPs .". It really shameful and sad that net users think this third-grade company is trustworthy and reliable. Net users in this country are also to blame. Their expectations are very low.
The only way to improve the quality of ISPs in India is to get foreign ISPs here. It’s something like Premier Automobiles Limited. This is the company that’s responsible for the Premier Padmini. The only reason why this car dominated Indian roads for three decades was because there was no competition. And from what I heard this company behaved like an arrogant brat. But after 1991, when the automobile market opened up, this lousy company was trashed. Now, you don’t hear much about them. What happened to the automobile market should also happen to the ISP market. Foreign ISPs like Verizon will teach third-grade cheaters like Hathway how to run an ISP.
That’s something I am really waiting for.
Note:
You can’t imagine how frustrated I was when I wrote this complaint. Did you think that as I wrote this complaint, I was connected to the internet and downloading stuff? Wrong! I actually wrote this complaint offline and just copy/pasted it when the net was working again. In fact, as I was writing this complaint I checked if the net was working. Three times, the net started working and then stopped working. That was really frustrating, especially since I was looking for details on Premier. That’s Hathway Internet and Broadband Services. They should actually change their name to Cheatway or Downway or Flopway.
OCT 6TH UPDATE
I have left Hathway now. Had problems all the way till the end. Again, I found myself in two different individual’s accounts. One was "GANGASAGAR PRASAD" and the other account belonged to "ISHWAR PARMAR". Who knows how many times my account must have been hacked into?
Sometimes, when I log in I get this beautiful love(error) message:
null: com.broadhop.exception.BroadhopException: Radius reference data does not exist for NAS IP 27.4.10.12 com.broadhop.radius.impl.RadiusReferenceData.getRadiusDevice(RadiusReferenceData.java:126) com.broadhop.radius.impl.RadiusReferenceData.getPortBundleKeyLength(RadiusReferenceData.java:217) com.broadhop.radius.impl.actions.GetPortBundleKey.execute(GetPortBundleKey.java:26) com.broadhop.utilities.policy.action.ExternalSyncAction.execute(ExternalSyncAction.java:32) com.broadhop.policy.impl.RulesPolicyService.processSyncAction(RulesPolicyService.java:354) com.broadhop.policy.Rule_Get_PBHK_Key_682d66dc_70c3_4639_bd13_692b69987cb3_twPbY15CEd_fMfBP98dVzQ_0.consequence(Unknown Source) com.broadhop.policy.Rule_Get_PBHK_Key_682d66dc_70c3_4639_bd13_692b69987cb3_twPbY15CEd_fMfBP98dVzQ_0ConsequenceInvoker.evaluate(Unknown Source) org.drools.common.DefaultAgenda.fireActivation(DefaultAgenda.java:554) org.drools.common.DefaultAgenda.fireNextItem(DefaultAgenda.java:518) org.drools.common.AbstractWorkingMemory.fireAllRules(AbstractWorkingMemory.java:475) org.drools.common.AbstractWorkingMemory.fireAllRules(AbstractWorkingMemory.java:439) com.broadhop.policy.impl.RulesPolicyService.internalProcessRules(RulesPolicyService.java:234) com.broadhop.policy.impl.RulesPolicyService.process(RulesPolicyService.java:124) com.broadhop.policy.impl.RulesPolicyService$PolicyExecutionRunnable.run(RulesPolicyService.java:635) java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:441) java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303) java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138) java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886) java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908) java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)
Well, no worries now. I have switched to another ISP. Hopefully, things will be smooth here.