Webafrica, you once again move further away from your customers

D

dd1313

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So Webafrica will be doing away with their IS packages.
I had a 3 X local IS 30 GB accounts for R130 each and now they want me to take
the WA local packages , which will be more than double that.

Eish you guys never seem to put the customer first !

As a very least you could have come up with a similiar package.

DD
 
Also got that email. :( Sad Sad news imo. At two of the business where I look after their PCs they use these accounts exclusively to send data between their branches. They don't need uber unshaped fiber-fast bandwidth for this. These normal IS local accounts were just fine for their needs. But alas. Seems like WA does not want their monies. I'll be moving their accounts and the 30GB account that I share with a friend over to Openweb or whoever is the cheapest. Byebye WA. :D
 
Serious chops if they are doing this (got no notification) ..... Time to start discussing where to go as the alternative.
 
I have 3 x Openweb 30gb local for R131 for my IS news server downloads. Never had a problem.
 
All of our clients have standardised on these IS local only accounts from Web Africa. Guess I'm moving them to Open Web. I asked WA on their forums to justify the triple cost but I was ignored so it's an easy decision.

Oh well, I'm sure they only want to sell their own bandwidth but at what cost to the public?
 
So the only ISP's that have 30gb local for +-R130 is Webafrica and Openweb.
Are there any others ?
 
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I'm going to play devil's advocate here and look at it from WA's perspective.

Firstly, it really doesn't make sense to sell a competing network's product when you have your own network. It did make sense back when they resold both SAIX and IS bandwidth, but given that they now run their own network, it would make far less sense to them.

Secondly, support and network quality issues. They control their own network; they don't control IS's network - dropping their IS products will make their support department's life a lot easier. Also, WA's selling point is the claimed superior quality of their own network - if IS drops the ball (which, in my experience, they have a habit of doing far too often), it hurts that selling point, and it's often not WA's fault.

When looked at from those angles, one can understand their decision. The people wanting WA's network quality will stick with them; the people who only worry about cost per gig will likely move elsewhere.
 
the question though kelerei is do the affected customers have WA network-specific products they are using as well? Will they keep these products if they move? I imagine they were making pitiful margins reselling the IS products but now they may not even have those customers looking at WA specific products anymore.

One guesses they will have tried to guage how many of these customers they are likely to lose and the numbers still work. Time will tell.
 
Kelerei said:
Secondly, support and network quality issues. They control their own network; they don't control IS's network - dropping their IS products will make their support department's life a lot easier. Also, WA's selling point is the claimed superior quality of their own network - if IS drops the ball (which, in my experience, they have a habit of doing far too often), it hurts that selling point, and it's often not WA's fault.
Click to expand...

If you look a little deeper into the Forum Posts, you will find that the WA customers that used these services had been happy with them as they where. I love the way that the Support and Quality issues are always brought up. Firstly, there is amble evidence that WA's service has gone down the river and there have been numerous service quality issues over the past couple of months as well.

Just saying it as it is. :whistle:
 
Hey guys,

Sorry I'm only jumping on here now. Will do my best to address all concerns here today :)

Regarding the IS product discontinuations, we've made the tough decision to stop these due to the following reasons, in summary:
  • Troublesome internal billing issues
  • Support - touching to fault logging, turn around times and too many issues that have become out of our control
  • Connection quality - not up to standard with WA's quality compared to our network
  • Network management - Faults and general issues are quicker to resolve through our network

To add though, yes, we can understand that seeing these products discontinued is disappointing, however we'd like to keep everyone with Web Africa though. Have a look at our Download Plus add-on, we've made some recent allocation changes as well as running a 50% discount after activating the add-on for the first three months :D

Noted though, that these products will only be discontinued on as of the 1st Feb 2010.
 
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WAJeff said:
Hey guys,

Sorry I'm only jumping on here now. Will do my best to address all concerns here today :)

Regarding the IS product discontinuations, we've made the tough decision to stop these due to the following reasons, in summary:
  • Troublesome internal billing issues
  • Support - touching to fault logging, turn around times and too many issues that have become out of our control
  • Connection quality - not up to standard with WA's quality compared to our network
  • Network management - Faults and general issues are quicker to resolve through our network

To add though, yes, we can understand that seeing these products discontinued is disappointing, however we'd like to keep everyone with Web Africa though. Have a look at our Download Plus add-on, we've made some recent allocation changes as well as running a 50% discount after activating the add-on for the first three months :D

Noted though, that these products will only be discontinued on as of the 1st January 2010.
Click to expand...

passing the buck once again.
 
WAJeff said:
Hey guys,

Sorry I'm only jumping on here now. Will do my best to address all concerns here today :)

Regarding the IS product discontinuations, we've made the tough decision to stop these due to the following reasons, in summary:
  • Troublesome internal billing issues
  • Support - touching to fault logging, turn around times and too many issues that have become out of our control
  • Connection quality - not up to standard with WA's quality compared to our network
  • Network management - Faults and general issues are quicker to resolve through our network

To add though, yes, we can understand that seeing these products discontinued is disappointing, however we'd like to keep everyone with Web Africa though. Have a look at our Download Plus add-on, we've made some recent allocation changes as well as running a 50% discount after activating the add-on for the first three months :D

Noted though, that these products will only be discontinued on as of the 1st January 2010.
Click to expand...


I'm sorry, but that is just not acceptable ..... that gives us no time to organize alternatives. Disgusting service that is, disgusting!
 
These guys clearly have NO idea what customer service is. The evidence is clear and mounting, WA are a bunch of clowns who dont deserve to call themselves an isp, i have been making a concerted effort to move all my business partners/friends/family as far away from WA as possible, its just not sustainable to be a WA customer since their network and service has gone down the toilet.
 
Mephisto_Helix said:
I'm sorry, but that is just not acceptable ..... that gives us no time to organize alternatives. Disgusting service that is, disgusting!
Click to expand...

Steady on, I think it's only new sign-ups that wont be available. Current accounts will probably remain until further notice.

I'm still moving to OpenWeb for local only as WA have not offered a similar product for the same price.
 
Despite the frustration, I congratulate WA for moving in a new direction, it may not be popular with everyone, but they've been around a long time and I'm pretty sure they know how to make a living.
If it means shedding their IS users, and getting rid of low markup products, cutting their loses, and ruffling your feathers then that's their prerogative.

Time will tell of course, and if nothing changes then they must be making a killing in the market. And people like me who spend small amounts of money on IS data don't deserve to feel that significant anyway, hence why I'm an Axxess customer. : )
 
Maybe WebAfrica should run a poll to find out what action would most piss off their remaining clients. They can then alienate their customers in a more efficient fashion, instead of in dribs and drabs as they have over the past few months.
 
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