Afrihost Business Uncapped Feedback

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dj2381 said:
Next person I see with a iphone gets a apple in the head.
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This isn't the fault of a iphone user - this is the fault of the service provider having inadequate capacity, and being unable to plan and provision bandwidth correctly.

If the service provider over sells bandwidth, and now don't have enough capacity, then the service provider is at blame, fairly and squarely. Why not limit the amount of available bandwidth to apple's servers?
 
Looking at the thread, I can see that it isn't just my speed that is absolutely terrible today (1Mbps on a 4Mbps account).

My question is this: when can we expect our speeds to return to normal?
 
savage said:
This isn't the fault of a iphone user - this is the fault of the service provider having inadequate capacity, and being unable to plan and provision bandwidth correctly.

If the service provider over sells bandwidth, and now don't have enough capacity, then the service provider is at blame, fairly and squarely. Why not limit the amount of available bandwidth to apple's servers?
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I suppose there's no reason to harm an innocent apple.
 
D3athR3aver said:
Looking at the thread, I can see that it isn't just my speed that is absolutely terrible today (1Mbps on a 4Mbps account).

My question is this: when can we expect our speeds to return to normal?
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If they knew they would tell us (indicating it is not the IOS updates).
 
requiem said:
If they knew they would tell us (indicating it is not the IOS updates).
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I personally can't believe that IOS updates could be the cause of this issue, as other ISPs appear unaffected. I also find it extremely difficult that one such update could have such a massive impact on the service - everyone I know uses an Android phone.
 
requiem said:
The analogy you are using is wrong.

The correct analogy would be the shop sending the phone in for repairs, leaving the customer without it, then a few days later the customer comes in to go get the "FIXED" phone, which has not been fixed.

Rinse repeat etc.
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... and if this is the case I will certainly leave AH. I was just trying to point out that mistakes / issues/ faults do happen and the most we can ask for is the service to be returned to normal. If normal is bad, then cancel the service
 
MaxST said:
... and if this is the case I will certainly leave AH. I was just trying to point out that mistakes / issues/ faults do happen and the most we can ask for is the service to be returned to normal. If normal is bad, then cancel the service
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The issue most of us have is the fact that is Appears we are being lied to.

Instead of addressing the problem, ridiculous excuses are provided, open and transparent communication is not.

Had Afrihost said "****, we are sorry, we didn't plan correctly and don't have enough bandwidth - you are all going to be throttled till we can buy more - which will be done by x date"....

I don't think a single person would have minded.
 
NarrowBand said:
Any reasonably intelligent person reading the last couple of hundred posts in this thread can see that the AH network has had problems going back to well before the IOS release. The official line is always to deny, deny and then deny again. The end result of all this is that the call centre gets overloaded, clients get more and more annoyed and frustrated as they can see where the problem lies but AH will resolutely refuse to acknowledge any issue with the network. The IOS story is just another excuse along the same lines. The fact that other ISP's have not been noticeably affected by this update proves that point beyond reasonable doubt. Note that AH continue to deny any problem with their network and rather place the blame on Apple. They then dig themselves into a bigger hole by saying that the downloads fail and that Apple won't allow the download to resume so it has to start over again. This may be true but how about this explanation:- The download fails because of poor performance on the AH network because it is already marginal on capacity. Then as one would expect it restarts and fails again. In the meantime more people are trying to do the same thing and ending up with the same result. This is an obvious snowball effect and will continue. The cause is not the IOS update but rather the fact that the network is running too close to maximum capacity during normal operation and therefore vulnerable. One can draw an obvious analogy to the situation that we have in this country with ESKOM. We have experienced rolling blackouts to prevent the whole system collapsing because the demand is exceeding the capacity. The only difference is that you don't pay for the electricity that you can't use during an ESKOM blackout.

From the numerous tests and comparisons that have been posted in this forum you would think that denial was impossible and yet it persists and is clearly a key business strategy. Bear in mind also that there are many more frustrated people out there who have reset their routers numerous times, done endless pings and traceroutes. Been told that the problem is with their line. Had non existent faults reported on their lines so that they have to wait for Telkom to arrive and "fix" the non-existent fault just to buy a bit more time.

If you are willing to invest a few days of your time you may eventually get to deal with "Critical Care". This is just more of the same! Only worse. They will resolutely deny any problem. To make you feel special they will give you a direct number so that you can call them without going through the call centre. When you call this number it will go to voicemail but unfortunately you will not be able to leave a message as the mailbox is full. Once again you will have to run numerous tests and eventually they will even give you a couple of accounts with rival ISP's so that you can run more tests. Although all these tests will show that the problem lies on the AH network they will continue to deny that there is a problem. Telkom will arrive at you door a few more times during this as well. Somehow the fact that there are no problems when using other ISP's over the same line and router is a clear indication of a line problem to the experts in critical care. You will then be given an account with a rival ISP that you can use "in the meantime". This will work great for a day or two and then run out. No problem you will get another account with a different ISP and the cycle will repeat. Just remember it will take you the best part of a day to make contact with "critical care" again.

Eventually you will reach a level of frustration that you cannot tolerate. You try to reach senior management and here I can assure you hat you have no chance whatsoever. You try sending an email to the ever friendly "Gian" and receive an automated response that although he would love to he probably won't respond to your email. He doesn't. By now you will be gettiing very angry, in fact I became so angry that I got in my car and drove to their offices in Rivonia determined to resolve the issue. Don't waste your time. My request to speak to senior management was met with a very blunt "Management do not speak to clients". There you have it plain and simple. Trust me that this is, for once, the truth. I then asked to speak to the "critical care" agent that I had been dealing with and was assured repeatedly that he was "on a call" but would be with me shortly. Despite the walk in centre staff going to check that he was on his way a number of times and assuriing me that he was there and would be on his way shortly after two hours of waiting he had suddenly "left the building" and was not available. That is what I call real "critical care".

This story continues but I will leave it here for now. If Afriman or Afriguy wish to continue this discussion then I am more than happy to continue this but only on the open forum. I have the email correspondence and some of the call recordings available. Don't tell me to send you a PM so that you can follow it up. That only serves to remove these discussions from the public view so that the denial can continue.

Personally I feel that the time has come for some sort of class action to resolve these issues. You can not promote a product as:-

"Business DSL Unshaped, Unmetered, Prioritised. Perfect for the office, or for the power internet user! No shaping (guaranteed) and prioritised for the best performance with unique features to protect your business" and then deliver what we have had recently.

That is simply not telling the truth and the 10 000 messages on this forum contain enough evidence of that.

Time to come clean!
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Both AfriMan and myself are always open to discussion on a public forum :)
We're being as transparent as absolutely possible, when we hear any news/ feedback around the slow speeds it gets posted here.

I know this is all really, really frustrating. I would be just as frustrated :( I promise, we have our best guys on this working to normalise speeds.
 
garp said:
I think this post from Wednesday might be the smoking gun in this scenario... exactly whose cap was exceeded? And why were uncapped accounts briefly hitting this on Wednesday?

What was the official explanation for this @Freakboy?
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Official response was that I had a wrong password setup on my router.
Strange seeing that it was the same username/password that has been in there for months.
It was replied with the "correct" password for the account, but according to my records (and what was on the router) it was a brand new password.
Put in the "correct" aka new password and I was able to connect at 15% of my 4Mbps speed.
 
MaxST said:
Yes, you are correct it saying that if it only worked 50% of the time it would be unacceptable, but, running at a much lower speed for a short period of time is not the same.

I have a retail background so I'll use a retail analogy. If you buy a cell phone, and it is not working, and return it to the place you bought it from, the best way the shop can sort out the phone is send it in for repairs. The customer will not be 100% happy about this because they bought a product and rightfully expect it to work, but the best the shop can do it try and fix the issue and not go back in time and prevent the fault.

The fact is that we, as customers, should expect everything to work 100% of the time, and as long as the relative service provider is willing to try and improve the service or fix the issues we are experiencing that is good enough for me. It's when I get the answer, "I'm really sorry sir, there is nothing that I can do to rectify the problem, your phone is now broken buy a new one" that I find it unacceptable.
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Seriously? Some of us have been strung along for two months now, so how long should we wait exactly? 6 months, 12 months? Nope, I'm sorry, I don't agree with you...As a forumite has pointed out, the customer care is very much non existent with AH...Tests after tests after tests, only for them to say your exchange is congested when another ISP's account works just fine...That's not going to fly...
 
JvanD said:
@Afriman, what process must I follow to move my DSL line to another ISP? Also is there an associated cost with this?

Also how long does the process take?
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Sorry to see you go :(
There's an option in ClientZone to cancel the line and have it moved back to Telkom. It'll take about 14 days to do so.
 
frobbertze2 said:
I beg to differ. From my personal experience, my line was averaging 2 meg yesterday. Today I am sitting on a line slower than 1 meg. Business uncapped in pretoria. Can confirm on other ISP I am not getting this problem.
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The traffic patterns are very similar to what we saw yesterday. I'm confident the high demand will ease soon.
 
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