Afrihost Business Uncapped Feedback

[wingnut771]

They'd be fscked as a business if they set a precedent that while they're experiencing trouble, they dish out 25% discounts. Especially for 7 months. No business could support that to be honest...

Their goodwill gesture should have come a long time ago, yes. But it should have been tangible, tenable, and sustainable as a precedent. There are quite a few things they could have done. Some very interesting things, to be honest, that could have worked in their favour from a PR and marketing perspective. They missed the boat though...

I'm not saying a blanket across the board discount. Just for the okes here on mybb as we are a minority anyway.

WA only offered this to me when I wanted to cancel so they weren't doing across the board.

 

[Paul Hjul]

Or orange if something is slightly borked.

Orange still suggests an actual fault

 

[wingnut771]

Remember that whatever move they make, is in the eyes of their customers and future customers, a precedent. So you do it once, you'd better be prepared to do it again, otherwise you once again lose the brand support of your market and you only delay the backlash rather than appease it...

Exactly, giving them incentive not to land themselves in this situation again.

3rd times the charm.

 

[jeanres]

I'm not saying a blanket across the board discount. Just for the okes here on mybb as we are a minority anyway.

WA only offered this to me when I wanted to cancel so they weren't doing across the board.

But you can get your account canceled for you by asking this....

 

[wingnut771]

Maybe you guys need a light and a bright green
Taking Red as a major outage event, orange/yellow as a limited impact outage event and light green as a usage note with bright green as "We are not aware of any impediments to awesomeness". So at the moment on the Western Cape, Northern Cape and Eastern Cape it should be green but instead of saying "Looking Good" it should say "Network Working" and then as an undated (so not a fault) block of text saying
"There are constraints on the IPC capacity for the Southern Region. This is not a fault. We are hoping to achieve full awesomeness as soon as the upstream providers are able to provide us with additional capacity which has been sourced."
Instead of the mobile or web logo on the side you can put a frowny face

I will go with this.

Light green for long term unforeseen circumstances.

 

[wingnut771]

One problem which they are probably running into though is that we are dealing with very thin margins here and the business accounts are priced incredibly competitively. There isn't a network fault so no downstream revenue is coming and they can't put breaks on client signup as each individual clients influence is negligible.

Are they not at this moment in time paying the same for their IPC as they were a year ago (south), but now, having more clients, therefore making a bigger profit?

 

[jeanres]

Maybe you guys need a light and a bright green
Taking Red as a major outage event, orange/yellow as a limited impact outage event and light green as a usage note with bright green as "We are not aware of any impediments to awesomeness". So at the moment on the Western Cape, Northern Cape and Eastern Cape it should be green but instead of saying "Looking Good" it should say "Network Working" and then as an undated (so not a fault) block of text saying
"There are constraints on the IPC capacity for the Southern Region. This is not a fault. We are hoping to achieve full awesomeness as soon as the upstream providers are able to provide us with additional capacity which has been sourced."
Instead of the mobile or web logo on the side you can put a frowny face

Paul, note the wording Afriman is using there, "long term issue' and "critical issue", he has classified it as a problem and as I understand it, the meaning of issue is "an important topic or problem for debate or discussion"

 

[wingnut771]

But you can get your account canceled for you by asking this....

Like the discount, I'm with you on this, very low blow from AH.

Unfortunately, MyBB are the minority, so, it shows they don't care that much for us, using info gathered from here to terminate an account!

I bet you gave them your deets in a PM to see what they could do to help your situation, bet you weren't expecting that!?

Moral of the story:

Keep your AH account and MyBB account separate, use clientzone support ticket system, don't get lured into the empty promises of "PM me and I will get right on it".

 

[jeanres]

Like the discount, I'm with you on this, very low blow from AH.

Unfortunately, MyBB are the minority, so, it shows they don't care that much for us, using info gathered from here to terminate an account!

I bet you gave them your deets in a PM to see what they could do to help your situation, bet you weren't expecting that!?

Moral of the story:

Keep your AH account and MyBB account separate, use clientzone support ticket system, don't get lured into the empty promises of "PM me and I will get right on it".

And worse part of all is, I am not even vegetarian

 

[Paul Hjul]

Are they not at this moment in time paying the same for their IPC as they were a year ago (south), but now, having more clients, therefore making a bigger profit?

not really because IPC in Southern Region is but one of several costs (the wage bill is definitely higher than Southern Region IPC)

Also I am not sure that client numbers are really relevant here but rather usage uptake -as an aside, I have a sneaky suspicion that they may have taken up some of the clients from MWEB who are involved in illicit reselling - which is simply a consequence of broadband permeating life.

 

[Paul Hjul]

Are they not at this moment in time paying the same for their IPC as they were a year ago (south), but now, having more clients, therefore making a bigger profit?

not really because IPC in Southern Region is but one of several costs (the wage bill is definitely higher than Southern Region IPC)

Also I am not sure that client numbers are really relevant here but rather usage uptake -as an aside, I have a sneaky suspicion that they may have taken up some of the clients from MWEB who are involved in illicit reselling - which is simply a consequence of broadband permeating life.

 

[wingnut771]

And worse part of all is, I am not even vegetarian

hahahahha

 

[wingnut771]

not really because IPC in Southern Region is but one of several costs (the wage bill is definitely higher than Southern Region IPC)

Also I am not sure that client numbers are really relevant here but rather usage uptake -as an aside, I have a sneaky suspicion that they may have taken up some of the clients from MWEB who are involved in illicit reselling - which is simply a consequence of broadband permeating life.

What about all the home clients that upgraded to "business" just to get away from the incessant shaping during this whole saga?

More money there already.

 

[TEXTILE GUY]

I'm not saying a blanket across the board discount. Just for the okes here on mybb as we are a minority anyway.

WA only offered this to me when I wanted to cancel so they weren't doing across the board.

Ì like that idea ... like an exclusive club discount ...... LOL,

 

[AfriMan]

What about all the home clients that upgraded to "business" just to get away from the incessant shaping during this whole saga?

More money there already.

From my understanding, this is a very small number of clients. However, we'll look at the situation very closely once Telkom eventually deliver the upgrades. I know that Gian and our other directors are very aware of what has transpired here on these forums and from other feedback channels.

 

[AfriMan]

not really because IPC in Southern Region is but one of several costs (the wage bill is definitely higher than Southern Region IPC)

Also I am not sure that client numbers are really relevant here but rather usage uptake -as an aside, I have a sneaky suspicion that they may have taken up some of the clients from MWEB who are involved in illicit reselling - which is simply a consequence of broadband permeating life.

While taking on new clients is always a factor, we've seen the free line upgrade over Nov/Dec/Jan/Feb steadily increasing the demand on the network. This has far exceeded any impact that month on month client base growth has ever had on our consumption of bandwidth.

This also matches up with the notion that significant upgrade on slower speeds (like 1Mbps and 2Mbps) has a much bigger effect on the rate of consumption than on higher speeds, but we've seen upgrades across the board here, so it's had a big impact for us.

 

[PurSpyk!!]

From my understanding, this is a very small number of clients. However, we'll look at the situation very closely once Telkom eventually deliver the upgrades. I know that Gian and our other directors are very aware of what has transpired here on these forums and from other feedback channels.

The problem is how much longer will we have to wait, I seriously doubt Telkom will do anything on Good Friday, and then there are even more holidays. So we wait, service is poor and we still pay full price. I got so frustrated with the inability to stream Supersport, I went out and bought a Walka. I mean you cannot even Stream low quality video? TwitchTV never works. The odd thing is torrents always seem to download full speed.

 

[AfriMan]

and then be black listed forever?

Once you claim the Double Money Back guarantee, it does result in cancellation of your product - it really depends on the nature of your cancellation and the manner in which it's done.

The idea of the Double Money Back Guarantee is that we do what's best for our clients, and try to give them a good experience, even when that last experience we can deliver is them leaving us. Sometimes relationship come to an end, but if we treat our staff, vendors and clients well by giving them good experiences through the good and the bad, then that's the best one can do under any circumstances.

 

[savage]

While taking on new clients is always a factor, we've seen the free line upgrade over Nov/Dec/Jan/Feb steadily increasing the demand on the network. This has far exceeded any impact that month on month client base growth has ever had on our consumption of bandwidth.

Again, just because Telkom provides free LINE upgrades, it does not mean the ISP *HAS* to provide upgraded INTERNET services. I.e., whilst Telkom upgrades my 2mbps line to 4mbps, my ISP may very well remain at 2mbps... No one FORCED these upgrades on Afrihost, and again, if you KNEW it is having an impact, why did you not WAIT untill you received your capacity in terms of IPC?

Blaming Telkom, is NOT going to win you any points. You need to start taking responsibility here...

 

[AfriMan]

Which is just vindictive.

Why lure people in with a green network status just to set them up for disappointment (if you're in the south) FORCING them to take the money back guarantee, which just ensures they never use AH again. :wtf:

Who would want to with that attitude/strategy (blacklisting all accounts!)?

A while back when I was with WA when they had their own IPC before they made the IS move and were in the same situation AH is in now, I was receiving 25% discounts on my account, a sign of good faith from the ISP that they value me as a customer and are trying to compensate me out of respect for the poor situation that is unfortunately in Telkoms hands.

I still left as I knew how long IPC issues take to resolve but that's not the point here!

EDIT: Note the use of the word "DISCOUNT", I think refund is the wrong word here and causing confusion with AH, implying a full refund in my mind.

I don't think that makes any sense - we definitely are not using the network status as some kind of business model tool - I think the numbers wouldn't add up and we lose more money that way.

The decision to not post a notice is based on our priorities - which are that the network status is there for emergencies like outages, urgent notices or information that needs to reach clients. An ongoing issue, with an imminent solution, is not necessarily at the same priority, in terms of what needs to be communicated immediately.

We are very open about the issue when it comes to dealing with our clients, but remember that line issues, shaping and router malfunctions are still happing on a daily basis. That's potentially hundreds (thousands) of clients who could end up being misinformed in terms of why they are not connected and getting good speeds. If those clients see a notice they don't fully understand (not everyone understands the concept of IPC) it could be worse for them. We still need to troubleshoot every single case to to determine the cause of any symptoms we see, and make sure that we improve or advise where we can, so that those clients affected by other issues are not fobbed off for a solution that ultimately won't help them.