Service should also factor in when deciding on an ISP. I needed a VoIP phone setup which was NOT provided by Cool Ideas. I'd already been through the manual and had the disti's techie try to assist to no avail.
The CI techie wasn't familiar with the model, but an hour or two later called back, said he'd learnt his way around the phone, and could I please let him login using Team Viewer. Done and dusted, up and running - support provided for an unsupported product, and at no cost.
A few months later, load shedding somehow caused the phone to reset to factory defaults, and I hadn't made a backup of the configuration. One quick call to CI, a techie will call me back. Once again, let him login using Team Viewer and once again, support provided for an unsupported device at no cost.
Downtime? What's that? Oh, I had a three minute outage once. It was back up before I could even find my cellphone.
When I applied for fibre, there was already an existing line to the property from a tenant who bailed without paying. Vuma wanted it paid up in full before they'd activate a line for me, CI got the bill squashed (or absorbed it, I don't know, and I don't care as the outcome to me as a customer was the same).
During this time I already had the VoIP phone setup and running on Rain/Cell C (one was a failover for the other). I ended up on a blacklisted IP address on one of the providers (I think it was blacklisted with Spamhause) which prevented calls. CI took it upon themselves to get the IP address removed from the blacklist - even though it wasn't part of their network.
They have definitely made their money back, as I've since recommended CI to dozens of people, and I know 100% that at least three have signed up with the potential that many more have done so without letting me know. They've gained free advertising from me which will last as long as their service is up to scratch.
Do I care that they're slightly more expensive? Not at all, as 30 minutes of downtime can cost me more than the price difference between them and the cheapest competitor.
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