Relakks Revisited
Relakks had a few problems shortly after their start due to the amount of users that registered with the service right after it was introduced. Connections have been really slow and I had no chance to further test the service and write about my experience with it.
I'm currently writing this article while being connected to Relakks and everything is working fine so far. I'm able to open websites and surf the internet without problems. I'm able to check my email and download files using Relakks.
Looking up the IP reveals 83.233.243.50 which is not a IP that my provider has assigning to me, nor one that I would ever receive. A Whois Lookup revealed a Swedish IP address owned by Labs2, the company that is hosting the website and providing the backbone of the Relakks network.
This means that websites and services are not currently able to identify me through my real IP because it is not revealed when I'm connecting to their service.
My download speed is almost maxing out like usual. You may remember that I had really lousy download and upload speeds previously when using Relakks. Those are almost my normal speeds that my connection is capable of: I normally have 1.8 MBps and with Relakks enabled I average 1.4 MBps. So normal download speed is great, what about P2P connections like torrent downloads?
The connection seemed normal. It is rather problematic to tell for sure but the speeds looked good after a while which is the usual behavior with p2p downloads. All legal of course and only for testing purposes.
I can only say that this is becoming a great service, suggest you give it a shot.
Update: Please read the comments and reviews about Relakks below in the comment section for other opinions about this service. They differ highly from my own experience and should definitely be taken into consideration before you consider subscribing for a longer period of time to the service.
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In response to Geeboz7’s comments all I have to say is:
***URGENT RELAKKS WARNING! – PLEASE READ ON***
I have the exact same experience. Relakks is totally unusable more often than not. Sometimes, it works fine and then it will totally shut down transfers to zero for extended periods of time. I don’t even bother with support because they offer none. I would not invest in their service at this point. It is a complete waste of money.
***URGENT RELAKKS WARNING! – PLEASE READ ON***
Well, I’d been using relakks for the past few months, on a monthly subscription and found it a relatively fair value service.
Yes; the connection would drop intermittently and sometimes I’d not be able to connect for a few hours, but then for 5 euros a month, there wasn’t much to grumble about.
So I decided, after renewing a few times, that I was happy enough to pay for a full years’ subscription – WHAT A MISTAKE!
About a week after renewing; I developed a problem – a few minutes after connecting; utorrent would GRIND TO A HALT! so would my HTTP connection, with any attempt to browse to a new connection resulting in a ‘Connection Interrupted’ error message in my web browser – I can’t even surf the net through relakks now!
It’s funny, but when I had issues trying to pay for my subscription; I got a reply within a week. When I mailed them about my connection problems – NO REPLY!. I emailed them AGAIN, but have still had NO REPLY IN OVER THREE WEEKS!
THEY’VE TAKEN MY MONEY AND RAN!
I now have a service that I PAID 50 EUROS for and CANNOT USE AT ALL. Worse still; they are offering NO SUPPORT WHATSOEVER.
I have a sneaky suspicion that my ISP may be severing or THROTTLING all connections to the Relakks server. If this is correct, no wonder the Relakks staff are keeping their heads in the sand; they’d LOSE A HUGE CHUNK OF THEIR CUSTOMER BASE by admitting to the problem. Virtually ALL EUROPEAN ISPs may now be, or could soon be BLOCKING RELAKKS! rendering their service COMPLETELY USELESS!
REALLY GUYS. DON4T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON AN INSECURE (PPTP) SERVICE WHICH WILL LIKELY SOON BE UNUSABLE TO ANYONE! THERE ARE PLENTY OF OTHER PROVIDERS OUT THERE OFFERING MORE SECURE SSL VPN THROUGH OPENVPN – AT LESS COST!
I’ve been using Relakks for over four months and, on ballance, am just about happy to pay the pretty low fee.
Granted; I almost never connect on first attempt, always have to redail a few times (sometimes up to 40 times!) to connect. Not a massive problem as I’ve set up ‘auto re-dial’.
Granted; Sometimes it just won’t connect at all (maybe 1 out of every 4 times). Normally, I just try again later or the next morning and it’s ok, but sometimes (maybe 1 or 2 times a month) it just won’t connect for a few days solid.
Granted; You might as well shout for help up a camels arse rather than send Relakks an email. Any emails you send are destined pass unnoticed into the lonely and forgotten land of ignored messages.
Granted; It sometimes (about 1 in 4 ‘sessions’) drops the connection for no apparent reason.
However, I reckon that if I tried to stay connected all month; I’d probably manage to stay connected for at around half of the month – plenty of time for me to do what I need to do!
I tried Relakks after reading this article.
If you’re thinking of doing the same, DON’T!!
Relakks refuses to provide any support and you’re likely to need it.
I have signed up for a Relakks account twice. Both times I ended up needing support as the result of a billing problem.
The 2nd time I signed up for a 1 year account at a cost of $84 ($50 EUROS).
After paying (using Paypal), I was unable to login with the credentials they provided. I then noticed that when I logged into their webpage, it said that my account was “inactive” and my payment had “expired” even though there was a record that I had just paid $84 to set up the account.
I have emailed Relakks more than 3 times over the period of 2 weeks, each time waiting about 4 days for them to answer. No response.
The Relakks attitude about customer support is very apparent from their website: https://www.relakks.com/faq/qna/#6
They say they will NOT answer any emails that do not follow the exact guide defined on their website. If these people had any technical skills, they could create a support form on their website that could collect the information they want in the exact format they require, but no, they want you to put it into an email.
They also don’t support OpenVPN, the standard and trusted open source VPN solution, and instead require that you use PPTP which isn’t as secure.
Either way, it’s a moot point for users like me who paid but never were able to login due to non-existant support from Relakks.
Relakks sucks.
Jonas Birgersson, the founder of Relakks, is intervjued by Thomas Crampton. Birgersson talks about Relakks and why he thinks it is needed. It’s a good and interesting intervjue!
Link to the clip: http://light.vpod.tv/?s=0.0.201364
i’m using relakks for 5 month now, everything is really fine. the only problem is the utorrent ussue. too high download/upload speeds let die whole internet connection and reconnect to relakks is required… see also utorrent official forum… thats really bad..but everything else i better than any other anonym.service… :-)
Does anyone know of any other similar services?
This service does not work. It works once in a blue moon with a bad speed. Good idea, bad implementation as usual. Very disappointing. Do not sign in for this service!
I’ve already disputed the charge on my renewal. It seemed to stop working about 9 days ago. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted!
A further update, 9th October. Their service actually worked for a few days just before the next month’s renewal was due. As soon as the fee was paid, it failed immediately and has been unserviceable for the past week. No reply to a number of emails, so I asked for my money back. The service is fine when it works, the problem is that it seldom works, they NEVER respond to support emails. Like that, they are a rip-off. They leave with little alternative but to ask Visa to blacklist them.
On 22 Sept, for the first time, Relakks server did not disconnect without my asking it to. It seemed they had at last provided enough hardware. Too soon! Today (23rd) it has failed totally.
There has been no notice or comment on their website, which was itself unavailable early morning.
The Relakks serice SUCKS!. I have been trying to get in touch with their so called customer sevice repeatedly but they do not answer emails and this is the ONLY way to contact them. Download speed is shite and with frequent disconnections. People need to know the “reliability” of this company is nonexistent.
Since two weeks back I have been unable to even connect to them. Stay away if you want to keep your sanity.
Your comments on Relakks. Date 5 September.
I have twice reported repeated drop-outs of the Relakks server to their support and have had neither acknowledgement nor reply.
Their servvice is currently not working reliably and they should acknowledge this on their website and say when they expect to have a working service.