2009 5
Twitter “Customer Care” at Fon is Fonwifi
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
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At Fon we are Fonwifi in Twitter. But it so happens that naturally FonWiFi is evolving from being us telling news about Fon to quickly becoming a first help site for customer care. We were not prepared for this but as thousands of Fonera 2.0 get shipped around the world we are doing what we can to answer. So long as people understand that it is not meant to be our customer care we are cool with it.
As far as the Fonera is concerned yes, we admit it, we can´t get the Bittorrent to work well. Megaupload works fine, and so does Rapidshare. You can also download by cutting and pasting links. You can even download when away from home by entering your fonera using DynDNS. You can also upload HD videos to Youtube, pictures to Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, convert 3G to WiFi, connect printers and webcams to it. But we do apologize about Bittorrent. It´s not that it does not work. Bittorrent is like loading 3 people on a donkey. Sometimes it moves…but sometimes it just crashes. Everything else requires less resources.
In any case the Fonera is open source and we welcome all help to fix that app as you enjoy the others which is still not bad for 49 euros plus shipping.
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cristian on June 6, 2009 ·
joder Martin…
the most interesting thing for me, at least, of the fonera, were the torrents…
now, i have 2 routers…
i’ve lost 50 euros…
mejor dicho, tú ganaste 50…!
Gerardo on June 7, 2009 ·
Well done. You most than others know very well how important is for any company to be on this 2.0 social world.
I’m very happy with my old fonera, so I won’t need no support.
About the torrents issue, have you think to remove all the torrent capabilities of the product description on the website? That would be a good move.
I know, I know, en español me hubiera expresado mejor, pero un domingo por la tarde, no doy más :-).
Greetings from your southern island Mallorca!
Borja (FON) on June 8, 2009 ·
Hi Steven,
FON’s authentication and revenue share features are working, so Foneros can roam, Aliens can pay and get access and Bills will receive their share of the revenues generated through their routers. However, we acknowledge that there is a problem with the way this activity is reflected in the logs in the User Zone. We are currently investigating it but, unfortunately, because it would be easier to fix, it is not affecting every user, so it’s hard to replicate. I cannot give a specific date that this bug will be fixed yet, but rest assured, we are working on it and it will be fixed soon. I also apologize for the lack of answer to your incidence, I will make sure that when we release the fix, it will be properly communicated.
Many thanks for your valuable feedback.
David on June 14, 2009 ·
So, what are you guys doing about it? You market a product with specific functionalities and the bittorrent client was a very important feature. We bought the product and now you tell us it does not work. Are you fixing it? What’s the roadmap on this?
Crying out to the community to fix your under-delivered product might be pushing the 2.0 concept to far, no?
alex puregger on June 14, 2009 ·
@ David,
this is not about crying out to the community but informing our community about a bug as soon as we identified it. We are sorry about that and are working on the fix. The product works. Regarding the torrent we recommend that you download only one big torrent at a time, as sometimes the Fonera experiences issues when it handles more and larger torrents. We are working on this and we expect to have that solved in few weeks.
We keep you informed.
alex (i work at FON)
David on June 14, 2009 ·
@Alex
Thanks for the feedback.
However, you have to admit that when a key functionality of a product fails, it has to be qualified as something more serious than a bug. The fonera “works” (lights are on), right, but one of the key functionalities was to download torrents. So far, I have not been able to replace my always-on computer and I have pretty much another router (now I have two) and extra consumption (since it cannot replace my PC and keep the same downloading habits) instead of the opposite. I’m sure you understand downloading one torrent at a time is not enough…
Anyway, I hope you fix it soon, thanks again for the feedback and be aware you are contributing to the global warming meanwhile, so at least plant a tree as penance 😉
cristian on June 15, 2009 ·
ok, i was trying to download an ubuntu torrent with the fonera…
the same, it freezes the router and i have to restart it to get the connection back again.
don’t work, even with one torrent at a time…
please, tell me. r u using the same firmware like everybody’s else?
Luis FON on June 15, 2009 ·
@ Cristian: What firmware is your Fonera 2.0 using? As Alex mentioned previously we are working on improving the torrent download feature. It will be valuable feedback also knowing the size and name of the ubuntu torrent file. Please contact us at http://fon.gs/contactar1/
steven leeman on June 18, 2009 ·
Hi,
the Fon Wireless logging has updated only once since I mentioned it… 2009-06-13 23:03:54
but no more again in the last week…
steven on June 22, 2009 ·
between 13th and 19th of june FON has even stopped logging?
If something illegal happened in that timeframe I can not let FON prove it wasn’t me but someone else?
Borja (FON) on June 24, 2009 ·
Hi Steven,
As explained in my previous reply, the logs work fine, and FON’s core functionality works just fine. We just have, in some cases, issues when displaying that information in the User Zone. If somebody did something ilegal with your router, you, or the relevant authorities, would contact us and we would be able to show that the user that performed those illegal actions wasn’t you. This bug will be fixed in the next release, in July.
Many thanks.
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steven on June 5, 2009 ·
It would help if FON’s core business would at least keep working?
Currently no fonera hotspot is logging any activity anymore since the end of may -> Router visit logs stay empty although people used it.
it’s mentioned to support@fon.com at the start of june… but no answer even after the promised 2 business days 🙁