Not a drama type person but this is actually pretty good

[larky 40]

Yes I know its about PIA, but this is the off topic forum anyway and i've been following a few PIA users over at PIA who are absolutely fed up with the way PIA treats customers. I though this thread was pretty good, although confusing at times, but this one post in the thread just really stuck out for me as i am also still a PIA customer (I use AirVPN too) with my PIA subscription to expire next week and can vouch for the validity of the information in this post > 

WARNING - PIA DATA CENTERS ODD IP CHANGES

  so I thought someone else might enjoy it too if they were past or present PIA customers and encountered the PIA BS. He is really raking PIA over the coals as are others in that thread.

[larky 40]

I didn't know it until earlier this morning the guy blasting PIA in that thread posted in link in the post above works for our company. I heard some of our guys talking about a test they did this past weekend involving the PIA VPN while they were at an ISP conducting some compliance testing of the ISP network, that's when I found out who the guy is. Looked at the info from the test, the issue with PIA is not good at all and more extensive than he lets on in that outlined in scant detail here > Test

 

Soooo.. glad my subscription ends with them in about a week. Their customer and tech support has really dropped into the pits.

[go558a83nk 364]

I don't know the whole story here but I did continue reading a little bit.  Apparently one of the problems people have is that the entry IP and exit IP are different.  But, AirVPN entrance and exit IPs are different on purpose, as a security measure.

[larky 40]

yep, but that's not the real issue. What people over there are mostly upset about at this point is:

 

 

1. There was no warning of this major change, then PIA lied about it and has of yet still failed to tell people what is happening.

 

 

2. PIA claimed one of the companies being used to do this change was a wholly owned subsidiary of PIA but that company was really surprised to hear this and has no knowledge of now suddenly being owned by PIA

 

 

3. PIA customer and service support is basically non-existent at this point.

 

 

4. PIA is using a fake company which claims to be incorporated to which the new IP address are registered. But, there is no such incorporated company. Then PIA claimed this company was a wholly owned subsidiary of PIA and that's not true either and that fake company is owned by someone else. PIA also claimed one of the other companies involved was a wholly owned subsidiary of PIA, that turned out not to be true either.

 

5. Long time outstanding issues have been ignored, such as technical and security vulnerabilities PIA knows about but has blatantly said they refuse to fix them but still admits their product causes the issue.

 

 

6. Support issues reported many times to PIA through their customer support. Customer support replies and says their engineers or developers said they could find no issue. It turns out that the engineers and developers were never told of the issues and customer support just wanted the people reporting them to go away so they lied.

 

 

There are many other things as well.

 

That's why this is suddenly exploding like it is, and started doing so when this change came about without warning before it happened. It was just another in a long line of things that PIA has failed on, it just finally boiled over and people are pissed.

 

[LZ1 673]

Hello!

 

Thanks for the explainer larky, that really puts it into perspective. I wonder if PIA will be around in 5 years time at that rate.

 

By comparison and to my knowledge about AirVPN:

1. Air is very open about any and all changes. Even when something doesn't work out; whether it's French servers being taken offline or Australian ones or datacenters going sour.
2. Air has never claimed ownership over someone elses company like so I believe.
3. Airs customer support is all internal and not leased/rented/outsourced like PIAs, which has a couple of advantages.
4. Just no. Air Staff already know their setup and how it works and thus have no need to lie about any sort of networking or buisness stuff.
5. Airs Staff routinely roam the forums, so they see many issues immediately when they appear. All the support people are also the technicians too and security issues are taken extremely seriously.
6. Point 5. Plus our community is arguably more tech-savvy, so we can help each other out too, which means support often doesn't need to be contacted in the first place.

I just thought that would be an interesting comparison, in case anyone was curious on how AirVPN handles things. That's what I know.

 

I also know that if I'm seriously wrong, the Staff account will track down this post and promptly correct me; isn't trust in things working well, a beautiful thing .

[larky 40]

Its all good and everything to, as PIA says, "fight for and defend" privacy and the sort. However, when money is involved and you have paying customers and are a business there is the business to take care of also. Running around trying to look important by throwing money at and supporting every privacy crusade that comes along, then changing things suddenly on a whim and not paying attention and lying to, and mistreating and not taking care of, and not suitably communicating with, customers is simply a bad and very poorly run business no matter how much PIA claims to be such defenders of "privacy" and supporters of this or that.

 

A few old sayings come to mind in context with PIA - Caveat emptor, "...a fool and his money are soon parted", and "...all that glitters is not gold"