Hi James, I actually have not heard anything bad about Swift Global for a while now. The main complaints I hear are about Zuku. The primary two being an almost complete lack of customer support and terrible international internet speeds even on their fibre network. On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 10:12 AM, James Mbugua <jgmbugua@gmail.com> wrote:
Is there anything Swift Global do right? All I hear are complaints, complaints, complaints!
On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 7:57 AM, Brian Munyao Longwe <blongwe@gmail.com> wrote:
FYI - makes good reading
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Doe Smith Kamau KipNg'etich Jones <skunkworks.ku@gmail.com> Date: Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 6:38 PM Subject: [Skunkworks] How Swift-Global's Mabeshte became millions of times better than KDN's butterfly To: Skunkworks Mailing List <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke>
well, Mabeshte is just-so-obviously-much-better than Butterfly. Its a good thing KDN gave it to swift-global. KDN din't know how to manage butterfly the way swift-global does... in fact, KDN did such a bad job, that swift-global had to rebrand it to Mabeshte.
Me and swift-global are trully "mabeshte" :-).
You see, Mabeshte is so much better than butterfly because......
1) Butterfly was cheaper .... but eww!! who wants cheap things!? excuse me, but I like to live above my means. Butterfly had a monthly unlimited bundle that cost 2320..... but how was it cheaper if Mabeshte sells unlimited internet for 24hrs at 50 bob (i.e 1500 bob a month) ???? -> well... it turns out that you will never spend just 50bob on mabeshte to get their net. Oh nooo.... there's the 10bob transaction fee charged for the paybill payment..... and to that, add the 50bob cred you'll spend calling support coz their system won't automatically email/text you a username & pass to surf through mabeshte. If you're lucky, u may have to spend 100bob if the system “completely missed” the mpesa sms for some reason....
...in fact, its taken 5hrs and a bamba 50 for me to start surfing on mabeshte to send this email.
and as for reversal of a botched payment.... it could take up to 60hours for swift-global to initiate it … ( and, as my collegue experienced it, you may have to send them instructions [with screen-shots] on how perform a reversal) and how is that a good thing.... it turns out that the longer it takes for you to receive an mpesa sms, the sweeter it is when it gets there :-)
and while the monthly payment to butterfly was apparently “more convenient” than paying 50bob daily to mabeshte, I like the way mabeshte helps me impress my friends because I appear to have money in my mpesa all the time :-), hehehehehe
Additionally, calling their support number (020692100) will first give you a pre-recorded "hallo"... and then give you a dial-tone which is actually charged as if someone picked up the phone!! my friends now think i'm on post-paid!! Swaga aje aje!! try it now and see! Just call, get to dial-tones, hang-up, and see your cred
Disclaimer: tested on safcom.
2) Butterfly was faster.... And yes... Swift-Global, in all their intelligence, know that capping speeds to 64kBps (kiloBYTES, not kilobits) helps reduce global warming and surges Kenya towards realisation of the vision2030 and Konza City.... …. and butterfly did the opposite... you see .... it was just *TOO* fast. And y'all know too much of something is deadly. When surfing at a butterfly hotspot alone (or late at night), butterfly indecently gave me its all!! can u imagine!! that's very, very.... veeeryyy "tabia mbayaaa".... hebu imagine that i would clock 1.5mBps (megaBYTES, not megabits)!! JEEZ!! It was so much that it was my slow comp that was the bottle-neck … not the network!! and that's just wrong!!
It made me feel really bad that KDN would mock my decade-old laptop with speeds that could have possibly killed it!! I mean.... how dare they!! ati 1.5mBps!!
!!! NKT !!!
swift-global's speeds... sigh... their capped speeds mean that the average ebook or mp3 will take 20 minutes to download, giving me ample time to focus on more important things.... like family.... or other even more important things... like solving world poverty, or eradicating world hunger and famine, or helping the flowers in my garden cross-pollinate... or trolling on the skunkworks mailing list.... Very important things indeed!!
and while I could stream at 720p or 1080p on butterfly, my comp could barely render the stream properly given its low specs.... but swift-globals cares for computers like mine, and cap their speeds to force me (and everyone else) to stream at 320p, which is good for my computer. Moreover, the capped speeds give me ample time to do other "important things" as I wait for the buffer to fill up! Kudos switf-global!!
3) Butterfly had tech-smart staff in their tech-support department .... WTF!? who wants to call support and get a know-it-all geek on the other end who speaks gibberish!? How i'm I, a skunkworks troll, supposed to make sense of... "have you confirmed that your computer is configured to receive network configuration data via DHCP"... JEEZ!! what on earth does that mean?! .... well.... ok.... i guess the butterfly tech team knew what they were talking about, and they did resolve down-times within an hour or two.... or ten-minutes. and yes.... they appeared to be well trained...
but jeez!! I like tech support people who speak my language... tech support who tell me to "turn you computer off, then turn it back on, then install a good antivirus, then wait 15 minutes before connecting."..... and thats the kind of support swift-global gives!!
Seeeee!!!! ... I told you swift-global support is much better! and sometimes, when you call swift-global support a lot (i.e more than two times), you'll get to talk to a woman with ATT!! and thats so cool!! I know y'all like women when they're all fiesty n ferocious :-) i know i do, heheheheh
….. and that's another good reason why swift-global needs to be more expensive. That fiesty tech-support lady is obviously paid a lot of money!! that kind of customer-support service doesn't come cheap!!
….. in fact... I think I'll call support again once I email this :-D
4) Butterfly was more reliable, with fewer downtimes... .... and that was a recipe for addiction to the internet!! Swift-global knows this, and that is why they let their downtimes last days on end. This also helps reduce global-warming, since computers produce less heat energy when they are not being used to browse ( or stream at 720p) … just ask any primary school science-teacher to verify this! and yes.. you guessed it... the down-times give me ample time to focus on important things....
and butterfly was rude enough to encourage internet-addiction by maintaining their network!! jeez!!.... after swift-global took over, one of their “nodes” (a pole with lots of transmitters) was toppled over by strong winds, and stayed like that for months!! and the node i'm currently connected to has had perenial power issues for 1 and a half years.... kudos swift-global :-)!!
... swift-global just knows how to run things.
Earlier today, as I waited for a payment to go through on mabeshte (for five hours), I had ample time to do something important.... i.e. draft a solution for world-piece.
And as I have penned it, the solution to world piece will start with swift-global handling the world's communications :-)... in fact, whoever named swift-global "swift-*global*" must have known this too! i bet he came up with the name after he got ample time to consider it during a down time :-)
later guys.... the fiesty support-lady just picked up :-) _______________________________________________ Skunkworks mailing list Skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke ------------ List info, subscribe/unsubscribe http://orion.my.co.ke/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/skunkworks ------------
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-- Brian Munyao Longwe e-mail: blongwe@gmail.com cell: +254715964281 blog : http://zinjlog.blogspot.com meta-blog: http://mashilingi.blogspot.com
"Give us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for, because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything."
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