MATE Reviews 

Appalling customer service can't fix the outage so says nbn's fault have to wait 24 to 48 hours for nbn to get involved. Been down 24 hours so far and no one home at mate on Sundays.

I had used Mates for over 5 years but VERY BAD AND SLOWLY SPEED FOR MORE THAN 6 MONTHS. I CAN'T ENDURE NOW. I even almost can't watch YouTube every night and Weekend day and night. VERY SLOWLY SPEED AND NOT CLEAR 🤯😔!

Every evening between 4-11pm my download speed gets shaped to 250kb a second. My internet also constantly drops out in peak times as well. Been with mate for 3 months and regret everyday of it. They seem destined to end up like TPG who artificially shaped users and got fined for it because it misled their customers.

Been with these guys for about 6 months, gave 'em a chance.. Their Soul Mate plans didn;t even allow me to stream 4k without buffering .. two or more ppl fighting for bandwidth and everyone starts crawling - Bumped the plan up to see if there were any improvements.. pffft... Never achieves anywhere remotely close to their advertised typical evening speeds (196)... @ $99/month I expect at least 150 at around 11pm on a 250/25 plan... Nope.. consistently struggles to reach 100, let alone sustain something remotely decent above this. Never had any dropouts, which I wouldn't expect any NBN provider to have in this day n age, but totally not gettin' my mula worth here... Adios Mate.. lets never see each other again.

My mother had switched to Mate from Telstra, given Mate uses the Telstra network. But, she has had constant issues with voice calls ever since. Very poor quality. Tried contacting Mate and was told they'd be in touch within 1-2 business days... weeks later, and I've heard NOTHING from Mate.

Avoid them.

Just moved house and need support. Mate Support is not contactable - phone line rings out and finally hangs up with no answer, they no longer do call backs even though the recording says they do, live chat is offline and still waiting for email reply. Mate could not care less anymore about their paying customers.

Terrible provider. Been with them for years and in the past 6 months I have advised and sent data/evidence of packet losses plus latency issues with a 250/25 plan which in some instances went down to 5/5. They kept blaming me saying they are all good without any returning data/evidence. The evidence I sent through was directly from the router port so the only thing it could be was the cable to the bridge. Replaced the previously new cable with another new cable and still had the same issues. Lodged a TIO complaint and they dropped me as a customer. Don't touch them as they sure aren't your "mate".

Poor customer service. not recommended for anyone,

Been with MATE NBN for the past 5 years but the recent outage that lasted for more than 2 days is unacceptable as I work from home and require a reliable internet connection. Despite receiving a SMS this morning saying the outage has been fixed, I still had no internet. I tried calling and waited an hour on hold but eventually gave up. The automated message while on hold advised to go to your website and chat online but your online chat wasn't available either. Extremely frustrating and terrible service.
I have since switched to Tangerine NBN who transferred me over within a few hours, hassle free! No more issues with our internet!

Been with the company for 3 weeks and had 3 outages. Still currently experiencing one for more than 24hrs, what a joke.
Their online support and phones are down and they're not really letting anyone know what is going or an ETA for our service to be up and running.
I've lost money due to working from home and my data reception cutting in and out on top of no wifi, do you think we will be reimbursed?... I highly doubt it!
Do not join this company, they're a terrible provider and couldn't care less about their customers

This seems to be the review forum for whingers.
Every ISP incurs some problems and Mates has fewer than most from my research. My personal experience they are friendly, service is brilliant and so is the speed.
Highly recommend.

just like other reviews, thought it was good for the price. but the amount of downtime is just ridiculous now. everyday it'll 1-2 times of connection dropping.
and today (20-Apr-2023), it's been a couple of hours at least!

Constant upgrades every week for a day. Constant drop outs. Very poor speed I'm on 100 and my speed this morning after 100 net reboots last night is 18.5mps they won't offer any form of sorry take your money and blame nbn. The ads make me think thanks for your money for our new/old classic cars but don't do anything for you. Worst part is I'm on 100 foe 1 adult and 1 kid cause we upped the speed to see if it improved and it's worse can't even watch netflix or YouTube. This is some sort of a joke. Last night we couldn't connect for a hour after it dropped out of its rediculas speed to start with it'd like watching the lowest resolution or worse on netflix you can't even see a person's face.. bye bye mate gave you enough chances

Having just immigrated from South Africa, I expected my internet and mobile experience to be amazing. However, deciding to go with Mate while offshore was a horrible decision. From battling to activate my new sim card on arrival, constant dropped calls, to very poor network speeds (both mobile and nbn which is often terrible during peak hours). It's only been a month of using them but I'm already searching for a different option.

Terrible service ..

Had data scan like many order new cards advise mate who gave 5 days sort out but cut service on day 1 and ignore us ??
Shockers

Poor peak hour internet speed and not that much faster during off peak neither. It would however show good speed on speed test websites. I “suspect” that they may also use some sneaky trickery which was notoriously known for and used by these cheap internet providers to give extra bandwidth to speed test website. This way, they will deny any slow speed coz those websites will show “no issue” with the speed.

Expensive comparing to the peers and somehow frequent downtime comparing to other internet providers I have used in the past.

If it’s not because I can’t be bothered resetting my wifi devices, I would have changed long times ago…

Not a good “mate”….

Customer service used to be their best selling point and I can't count the amount of times I have highly recommended it to friends. Mates' team back in 2018 in Adelaide were responsive, they cared and they knew me.

Now they are like everyone else: online chats, no published phone numbers on their website, saturated call centres and long call back times, and here this one: if you have a technical problem, such as "no internet" the recommended way to reach out to the technical service is "send us an email".

They call you "mate" but it is not true... even when I've been a customer for over 5 years, their reps don't even read my file and keep asking over and over again the same things, as if you were that first time customer with zero knowledge on how to turn something on and off.

And also, their speed has always been a big lie, I pay for a 50/20 plan but I have rarely got anything about 30/14.

1. Terrible internet coverage. I have a tiny little house and could not even get coverage from one room to the next. The router they make you buy is absolutely pathetic. I asked a Mates staff member why it was so bad and they said they knew it wasn't the best but it was the only router they could get in bulk!
2. When the internet was running it was incredibly slow and continually froze or dropped out.
3. After offering me $20 off my plan for 6 months, Mates did not actually give me the $20 off for the first two months. When I rang to query them, they agreed that they had offered me $20 off for 6 months, but said their system wouldn't allow them to apply the discount for the previous months so they weren't going to give it to me. They then reluctantly agreed to give me one lot of $12.33 off my next bill saying that it was a pro rata amount because I wasn't with them for the full first month. When I pointed out they charged me for the full first month AND didn't apply the promised $20, they again said there was nothing they could do about it. The CS rep was completely disinterested in helping and didn't care.
4. The next day I arranged to go with another internet provider. By the following day, I was all set up with my new provider so I contacted Mates via their chatbox and asked them to ensure my account was closed and that any refunds I was owed went through. The girl told me that she would process the refund straight away. (Days later I am still waiting for that!) I asked her to send me a final invoice or at least a breakdown of the final refund, credit and debits. She said it wasn't possible as the account had been closed. When I pointed out that a final invoice was a legal requirement and legally required for tax reasons, she just kept repeating that it wasn't going to happen. I then told her that I was contacting the ombudsman and she said that was fine, go ahead and do that. At that point I ended the chat. I most definitely will be contacting the ombudsman and I have screenshotted the conversation as evidence.
5. Their behaviour is nothing short of shonky and dishonest. They will be very friendly to you to get you to sign up but once you are signed up, their care factor goes out the window. This appears to be the culture of the company. I was with my previous provider for over 10 years so I am a loyal customer. I thought I'd give a smaller Australian operation a go. Biggest mistake I ever made!

i have been a customer of Barefoot Telecom (which is now Mate) for over 4 years. We hadnt had any issues whilst they were still trading as Barefoot, but in the last year we have had 3 issues. (1) they changed their IP addresses (or something like that) which meant all the streaming services thought we were outside Australia and so the services did not work (we had to hot spot from our phone to the tv for > 2weeks). (2) our internet dropped out one weekend. couldnt get through to customer support. after initially being told it was a problem at our end, eventually convinced them to get NBN to investigate. NBN confirmed loose wiring in the NBN box outside the perimeter of our house. So no internet for > 7 days and no refund of monthly fees, and (3) upgraded to FTTP. still paying for both FTTN and FTTP. suddenly on Friday night internet stopped working. didn't work on either FTTN or FTTP. more than 36 hours since emailing customer support no response. tried calling during their "office hours" at 8.30am (when they open on Saturday). automated message said they would return call in 1-2 hours. 11.30am on Sunday no contact, and their "office is closed".

Ultimately you only know how good a company is when you have a problem and see how they deal with it. With Barefoot i used to get through to customer support very quickly. Now it is days before you get a return phone call, but i do acknowledge their support staff are generally very good (when you actually get through to someone).

'we can see in our system why the internet went down on your birthday but we are not responsible' switched to exetel! forgot how good they actually are. AussieBB, Mate and TPG have all had a go at ripping me off.. exetel are top of the game.