Web Africa - Poor support and hosting services

[techgents]

Before I start my complaint I have to say that Web Africa offers a good selection of products at very reasonable prices. I have several accounts for different businesses and use hosting, mail fire and adsl.

The problem is that they just can't seem to get their hosting right. Not the services nor the support for the services.

With regard to services, I am plagued by errors on the new Website Panel that they have moved to. The issues range from arbitrary errors when moving from page to page, to very slow response times after clicking on a link within the panel, right down to features just not working (Application Gallery not allowing a Wordpress installation etc).

With regard to support, I seem to be passed from one incompetent nitwit to the next. Only after a huge amount of complaining am I passed onto senior support which is an absolute pleasure. The kinds of response I get from my email support requests range from the bizarre to the ridiculous. The support person either does not understand the request or has not read the request properly. Or both. But that does not seem to stop them from bumbling around for several days only to come back with an instruction to do something that I did several days before and mentioned it in the first email I sent.

My reactions range from indifference to rage to complete defeat as I try and get an unqualified support person to answer a basic hosting question. Each support request is met with an irrelevant response to seemingly buy time until the query can be passed onto someone who actually knows what they are doing (Thank you Mohammad Cassim).

And so I talk to various heads of departments and each time I get apologies (and the odd discount) but trust me when I say… I don’t want a discount.

I want a service that I am confident to use and resell onto my clients without worry that tomorrow morning some wet eared support person has had a go at fixing a problem and buggered up my services in the process.

Web Africa.. please. Give some serious thought to bringing in an external company to sort out your call centre, train your staff and get rid of the noobs who don’t carry enough logic to actually understand what the client is asking for.

[koffiejunkie]

Hmmm, spot the trend.

[koffiejunkie]

Considering their confusing job spec, I'm not surprised you get incompetence from them.

For a "Senior hosting agent"

"Windows Server 2003/8, MSSQL Server 2005/2008, Internet Information Systems, Apache OS & 5 experience VERY advantageous"

What the heck is "Apache OS & 5" ?

[byron_spy]

Web Africa manages my net @ the office cant really complain as far as hosting is concerned you get some awesome companies out there

[Denouncer]

I feel your pain techgents. I'm busy moving my last site off their hosting because I've had enough.

I originally hosted two sites with them, but after getting over 60 hours of downtime in just 1 month on one of them (you can see my HelloPeter complaint here - http://www.hellopeter.com/webafrica/...service-614243), I moved it onto Hetzner and haven't had an issue since. Faster, more stable, and their technical support is amazing (their techies know what they're talking about).

But as you mention, it's not just the continuous downtime and server misconfigurations that's frustrating, it's the below-par technical support. Unless you provide the exact steps on how to fix a problem they in turn have created, you never get anywhere. I suspect the customer support at Telkom has better technical knowledge of hosting than Webafrica's support staff. And that says a lot :P

The answer is simple though: move your site somewhere else, and you won't look back.

[waroop]

Hi techgents,

This is very concerning to us over here at Web Africa. We're going to be investigating this first thing tomorrow and will be in touch.

[waroop]

Hi Techgents

I would like to thank you for this valuable feedback; it is because of this that we are able to constantly improve on the service we deliver.

Your feelings are completely understandable, I would feel the same in that situation. Know that we are aware of these challengers and are feverishly working at getting this right.

We have made significant improvements with regards to additional CPU & Memory resources to the WSP servers, this has enriched response times and general performance. We have created a test hosting space on your WSP account and successfully installed Wordpress from the Web App Gallery. We will contact you telephonically to troubleshoot further.

Not long ago one of our biggest challengers (in terms of feedback we received from our customers) was our response times with both telephonic & email support. To address this concern we grew our support pool by more than 40%, as you can imagine this has come with challengers of its own as the process of getting these new joiners up-skilled takes time, we believe that as they grow in experience while receiving the necessary training and development they will be as equipped as our senior support agents to deal with queries.

We have already seen significant improvement in our turnaround times and customer satisfaction metrics, we believe that this trend will continue as skill level increases.

Our aim is to ensure that all of our customers are completely confident in what Webafrica has to offer and I hope that we can instil this in you.

Once again, thank you for your feedback and on-going support.

[WAJustinW]

Hi techgents,

Reading your post is extremely alarming and I can see why you are so frustrated. Like Waroop as mentioned we have made huge improvements in our hosting support especially related to the number of support agents on call but now we have the challenge of getting them trained up properly so they can provide the same type of support as a Senior would be able to. But in saying this the agents you dealt with before should have made sure they are providing you with accurate information and if they did not know or understand they should have asked a Senior to assist.

I would like to get this investigated but I need your client code and details. Can you please PM you details so I can take this further.

[gnomez]

+1 for the prompt WA replies