Afrihost Mobile Feedback Thread

[AfriGuy]

Pity I only came across this thread now, after porting my numbers. After reading your spiel about evergreen, I was under the impression that airtime does not expire. Guess you got me, will have to wait 60 days and port back to a simpler system where I do not have to try guess how much airtime I am going to use and buy the right amount. Much easier to just topup when needed.

Very disappointed Afrihost, MTN is really rubbing off on you guys.

Sorry to hear you aren't 100% happy with the product
The intention was to never deceive anyone, that I can promise you The only Mobile product that doesn't see expiration are our prepaid options.

Happy to clear anything else up for you?

 

[The_Traveller]

One thing I can tell you, my kids are having a blast with the 10gigs of bandwidth as well as the airtime.

My son actually told me " WHY MTN !! ! ! ! ??" , and I told him STFU, try it first ...

 

[AfriGuy]

One thing I can tell you, my kids are having a blast with the 10gigs of bandwidth as well as the airtime.

My son actually told me " WHY MTN !! ! ! ! ??" , and I told him STFU, try it first ...

Great to hear you and the family are digging it

 

[Chingha]

Anyone else getting dodgy call times listed in there Usage report?
Had a couple of outgoing calls that I put down as soon as they went to voice mail listed as 30s and 29s respectivly, I was debited 18 and 13 cents for these, the problem is that according to my phone the calls lasted 3s each. I believe the 3s, oh, voicemail, click, about 3s.

So I went back and looked at the last couple of call durations:
billed 30s actual 3s R amount 18c
billed 53s actual 47s R amount 224c
billed 89s actual 83s R amount 391c
billed 29s actual 3s R amount 13c
billed 121s actual 107s R amount 503c
billed 110s actual 94s R amount 442c

This is with the built in Samsung dialler app.
Why the huge variances in some cases?

In fact over these 6 consecutive calls the variance is 95 seconds in afrihosts favour!

 

[surfs-up]

***** AfriGuy *****

Advice please. I bought several (3) of your mobile deals end January. I am leaving on monday for Australia and New Zealand, for a 3 week trip. I plan on taking one or two of my Afrihost loaded devices with me. Probably a Note 3 and a Samsung Tab S2 tablet (both with Afrihost SIM cards inside)

1) I know that by default all Afrihost mobile packages are enabled for international use, correct ?
2) Will I need to change my APN from Afrihost and over to "internet", or which APN should I use ?
3) Will data and phone calls I make, come from the cash balance in my SIM card, and what is the R/min and data R/Mb ?
4) If I load say R 1000.00 into my Afrihost SIM, and I only use R 500 overseas, will I loose the other R 500 at the end of the month ?

Any other experiences from guys that have been to Australia/New Zealand would be appreciated. I have done some internet searches and visited all the service providers websites to look at pricing, and it looks like mobile data is REALLY expensive in NZ. It is way cheaper here.....about NZ $ 50.00 for 2 GB (R 550.00)

 

[mike6870]

Good value for money. Easy to use. When things go wrong though, the so called client zone and call in is an absolute nightmare. Afriman, feel free to jump in....would love you to try explain the replies the agents send out.

 

[AfriMan]

Anyone else getting dodgy call times listed in there Usage report?
Had a couple of outgoing calls that I put down as soon as they went to voice mail listed as 30s and 29s respectivly, I was debited 18 and 13 cents for these, the problem is that according to my phone the calls lasted 3s each. I believe the 3s, oh, voicemail, click, about 3s.

So I went back and looked at the last couple of call durations:
billed 30s actual 3s R amount 18c
billed 53s actual 47s R amount 224c
billed 89s actual 83s R amount 391c
billed 29s actual 3s R amount 13c
billed 121s actual 107s R amount 503c
billed 110s actual 94s R amount 442c

This is with the built in Samsung dialler app.
Why the huge variances in some cases?

In fact over these 6 consecutive calls the variance is 95 seconds in afrihosts favour!

The usage is completely managed by MTN as a prepaid service. So there would be no difference in how a regular prepaid call is billed compared to through us. Remember that we are simply topping you up with airtime. That's why we also don't store or have access to your call records, that is solely administered by MTN.

 

[AfriMan]

***** AfriGuy *****

Advice please. I bought several (3) of your mobile deals end January. I am leaving on monday for Australia and New Zealand, for a 3 week trip. I plan on taking one or two of my Afrihost loaded devices with me. Probably a Note 3 and a Samsung Tab S2 tablet (both with Afrihost SIM cards inside)

1) I know that by default all Afrihost mobile packages are enabled for international use, correct ?
2) Will I need to change my APN from Afrihost and over to "internet", or which APN should I use ?
3) Will data and phone calls I make, come from the cash balance in my SIM card, and what is the R/min and data R/Mb ?
4) If I load say R 1000.00 into my Afrihost SIM, and I only use R 500 overseas, will I loose the other R 500 at the end of the month ?

Any other experiences from guys that have been to Australia/New Zealand would be appreciated. I have done some internet searches and visited all the service providers websites to look at pricing, and it looks like mobile data is REALLY expensive in NZ. It is way cheaper here.....about NZ $ 50.00 for 2 GB (R 550.00)

Thanks for this post - great questions

1) Yes, international is enabled by default
2) Our mobile data won't work by default overseas, so you will probably need to check with MTN. I would assume using their APN will give you access with partnered networks
3) Everything will be reduced from airtime (including data use, if you switch to MTN's APN)
4) You won't lose that airtime, but it will factor into your replenishment amount on the first and you will only get an airtime topup once your airtime value falls below the product value and we top you up back to that value.

 

[AfriMan]

Good value for money. Easy to use. When things go wrong though, the so called client zone and call in is an absolute nightmare. Afriman, feel free to jump in....would love you to try explain the replies the agents send out.

That's not good at all. Between the ClientZone and our Mobile you should have all the info you need. If not, our team should be able to answer all your queries (at least the ones resulting from actions on our side).

Can you drop me a PM and give me some more specific examples I can follow up?

 

[Chingha]

The usage is completely managed by MTN as a prepaid service. So there would be no difference in how a regular prepaid call is billed compared to through us. Remember that we are simply topping you up with airtime. That's why we also don't store or have access to your call records, that is solely administered by MTN.

I don't have a relationship with MTN, I do with you.

You do have access to my call records, you publish them in the Clientzone, where do you think I got this info in the first place?

You haven't answered the query, a legitimate one, at all. You take my money, you account for how much you bill me, simple

 

[Chingha]

Here is a random sample of 6 calls yesterday in case you need data:

Please let me know if you would like either the source or the spreadsheet



Note the effective billing rate of R2.21/min rather than the advertised rate of R0.79 and the billed time of 432sec rather than the Samsung measured time of 337 sec.

I know you have been aware of the over billing for for some time and yet I just have to pay and pay. The time differences is a new issue that I hope you take a bit more of a customer focused approach on

 

[airborne]

Pity I only came across this thread now, after porting my numbers. After reading your spiel about evergreen, I was under the impression that airtime does not expire. Guess you got me, will have to wait 60 days and port back to a simpler system where I do not have to try guess how much airtime I am going to use and buy the right amount. Much easier to just topup when needed.

Very disappointed Afrihost, MTN is really rubbing off on you guys.

Stick with Afrihost, just convert to Prepaid in the clientzone from the month end, then you can load airtime as needed and benefit from the awesome data rates.

 

[AfriGuy]

Here is a random sample of 6 calls yesterday in case you need data:

Please let me know if you would like either the source or the spreadsheet

View attachment 340542

Note the effective billing rate of R2.21/min rather than the advertised rate of R0.79 and the billed time of 432sec rather than the Samsung measured time of 337 sec.

I know you have been aware of the over billing for for some time and yet I just have to pay and pay. The time differences is a new issue that I hope you take a bit more of a customer focused approach on

Sorry to hear you haven't seen the best experience with us. I'm not aware of any billing/ accounting anomalies from our end, and I think AfriMan has covered how things work pretty well in his posts.
We'll gladly look at this for you, however for a query like this I'd urge you to create a formal ticket with your finding that we can investigate both from our end and have MTN have a look too.

 

[mike6870]

Will drop you a pm. Would love you to go through the unanswered and " someone will call you asap" type replies we have received.

 

[Nivec]

Sorry to hear you haven't seen the best experience with us. I'm not aware of any billing/ accounting anomalies from our end, and I think AfriMan has covered how things work pretty well in his posts.
We'll gladly look at this for you, however for a query like this I'd urge you to create a formal ticket with your finding that we can investigate both from our end and have MTN have a look too.

I would also like to know the outcome of this, just looked at my logs, the afrihost logs are around 30 seconds more than the phone logs.

 

[AfriGuy]

I would also like to know the outcome of this, just looked at my logs, the afrihost logs are around 30 seconds more than the phone logs.

Please submit the details through to our team, I'd like to have this escalated for you.

 

[Nivec]

Please submit the details through to our team, I'd like to have this escalated for you.

Done.

 

[AfriGuy]

Done.

Thanks, we'll have this followed up ASAP.

 

[Chingha]

I would also like to know the outcome of this, just looked at my logs, the afrihost logs are around 30 seconds more than the phone logs.

Mind checking your cost per minute please, is it the 79c advertised or the R2,50 ish that I'm charged? (see the spreadsheet)

 

[Nivec]

Mind checking your cost per minute please, is it the 79c advertised or the R2,50 ish that I'm charged? (see the spreadsheet)

While the call lengths vary drastically between the phone logs and afrihost logs the actual billed amount is closer to the phone logs, but still in afrihost's favor by a few cents. The examples I sent afrihost are:

Phone Log : 19 seconds
Afrihost Log : 33 seconds
Billed : 28c

Phone Log : 5 seconds
Afrihost Log : 34 seconds
Billed : 10c

Phone Log : 2 seconds
Afrihost Log : 32 seconds
Billed : 6c

My ticket has been replied to saying calls are logged by MTN when initiated, opposed to the phone that logs calls when answered. Also, depends on call type..... Does not help me, it may only be a few cents but still feel I am overcharged.