Afrihost Business Uncapped Feedback

[Fudzy]

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.

Why does Axxess then do it and you don't?

 

[AfriMan]

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.

Telkom do work on holidays and weekends, at a certain specialised level they are available. If that's the date they provided - I would only imagine that there is some level of planning involved.

 

[AfriMan]

Why does Axxess then do it and you don't?

That's a question to put to them, they're management may have felt differently about this and they operate independently from us.

 

[savage]

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.

The same can be said about those clients in Cape Town - that don't fully understand IPC. They have the right to know that there is issues. Now your support desk (when they eventually DO respond), have the luxury of blaming lines, blaming telkom, whilst meanwhile, Afrihost actually has no one to blame but themselves.

Your lure the client in, if the client is technically advance you hide behind your double your money back guarantee, and if the client is not technically advanced, you play the blame game, blaming lines, blaming exchanges, blaming absolutely everything except what it really is.

You are NOT taking any form of responsibility here! Nudda, nothing! Frankly, you are LIARS!

 

[Fudzy]

That's a question to put to them, they're management may have felt differently about this and they operate independently from us.

Ah okay, so you just share directors.

 

[Wackyza]

I would say that this IPC issue is a lot more problematic for the company and should take a much higher priority than a quick fix network issue. As you said "urgent notices". I see this as quite urgent. Therefor i feel if anything should be on the network indicator, then it should be this.

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.

 

[Chevron]

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...

Well said.

 

[i.got~issues]

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.

ALL your products get cancelled... not just THE product you claim against... or is this still a grey area that is still to be defined by the directors and updated on the site?

 

[AfriMan]

Not to jump to their defence here, but if we're talking a substantial number of customers then you can land up with future cash flow issues with such a discount. I don't know their model though, but 40% discount could land up creating a cash vortex in the future months and you end up in a position where they can't finance future IPC or other upgrades from cash flow. End result? End user suffers.

Not saying a discount model isn't appropriate, but you might find 40% is just untenable...

I think it's also important to state that our margins on the data we sell are very low. While there was a small reduction in IPC costs (which was part of our decision to upgrade the network significantly) we are still essentially seeing consistently higher data consumption, hence higher costs. I think there is an impression that we have a cash windfall from less consumption, and we're using that to purchase more capacity - it's actually the other way around. Our costs are higher than ever, but we're taking additional risk to try to improve our clients experience.

 

[AfriMan]

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...

I think it's a good point here - but we're not so much concerned with setting precedents with the practicalities of taking certain decisions.

I've seen a few suggestions and I believe I have explained which are practical and possible, and those that are I have escalated to management. Those that are not, like creating new realms and moving clients onto another network, have been explained as such. I think I've been pretty open about why they are not really possible in reality - no matter how god they look on paper.

 

[AfriMan]

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

LOL - maybe I should just send AfriDog with a message

Definitely some ideas for future redesign of the network notices. At the moment, I know we are limited by certain design constraints. We also need to factor in whether something like this will dilute the reach and effectiveness of the notices - ultimately we alway want to be able to get client's attention with urgent information. If there is constantly an issue here or there, clients may miss something really vital like an outage or scheduled maintenance, etc.

 

[Chevron]

LOL - maybe I should just send AfriDog with a message

Definitely some ideas for future redesign of the network notices. At the moment, I know we are limited by certain design constraints. We also need to factor in whether something like this will dilute the reach and effectiveness of the notices - ultimately we alway want to be able to get client's attention with urgent information. If there is constantly an issue here or there, clients may miss something really vital like an outage or scheduled maintenance, etc.

Green - Everything fine
Orange - IPC shortage
Red - fault

 

[AfriMan]

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.

They are very low, and I'm sure that Gian and co won't mind me mentioning that a lot of clients ultimately get bandwidth well below our cost, which we subsidise to offer a great price to the market.

 

[savage]

I think it's also important to state that our margins on the data we sell are very low. While there was a small reduction in IPC costs (which was part of our decision to upgrade the network significantly) we are still essentially seeing consistently higher data consumption, hence higher costs. I think there is an impression that we have a cash windfall from less consumption, and we're using that to purchase more capacity - it's actually the other way around. Our costs are higher than ever, but we're taking additional risk to try to improve our clients experience.

Your problem - not mine. I've seen (and I've personally done this) companies giving refunds to customers for outages where they run MASSIVE losses for the month in which they execute the refunds. It boils down to what are you prepared to do, and what aren't you prepared to do.

It speaks allot of how much Afrihost actually appreciates their customers.

We are also not talking about a full blanket refund of your entire customer base. We are talking about one single product, in one single area. It's a small percentage of your userbase - can't be more than 15%... Frankly, it's soo little, that you don't even CARE whether the customer stays, or goes. You're more than happy to just say fsck off. That's a nice mentality, and a very mature way of running 'business relationships' yes.

 

[Bona Botse]

I think that people aren't jumping ship because they think that if other people leave then the network will return to its glory days. So now we have ourselves a good old-fashioned holdout.

 

[savage]

I think that people aren't jumping ship because they think that if other people leave then the network will return to its glory days. So now we have ourselves a good old-fashioned holdout.

How many more times must this be said? People aren't leaving because they cannot get their money back! The money back guarantee is ONLY APPLICABLE ON THE FIRST 60 DAYS! The long term supporters (those that are ACTUALLY loyal) that wants to leave, are SCREWED becaues Afrihost does not want to give them their money back!

I've asked NUMERIOUS TIMES, how does a customer get a refund that has been a client for more than 60 days.... ZIP, ZERO, NUDDA responce... I said it before, I'll say it again. Issue refunds, and this entire thing goes away!

 

[jeanres]

That's a question to put to them, they're management may have felt differently about this and they operate independently from us.

Same directors.....

 

[Fudzy]

How many more times must this be said? People aren't leaving because they cannot get their money back! The money back guarantee is ONLY APPLICABLE ON THE FIRST 60 DAYS! The long term supporters (those that are ACTUALLY loyal) that wants to leave, are SCREWED becaues Afrihost does not want to give them their money back!

I've asked NUMERIOUS TIMES, how does a customer get a refund that has been a client for more than 60 days.... ZIP, ZERO, NUDDA responce... I said it before, I'll say it again. Issue refunds, and this entire thing goes away!

You're not entitled to one, the same way as you're not entitled to one from most places if the product isn't returned in a short space of time.

 

[savage]

You're not entitled to one, the same way as you're not entitled to one from most places if the product isn't returned in a short space of time.

We're talking about a SERVICE, not a PRODUCT. I have PRE-PAID for a service that is NOT being delivered.

 

[jeanres]

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.

So he can say what I said and keep his account? Damn screw double your money back, it's more like you have double standards.