You make a lot of accusations here about bad business practices, but I take particular offence to you referring to our people as idiots. If I were to do the same, I'm sure you would be the first to call that unprofessional, so let's have that type of courtesy run both ways shall we.
You're perfectly correct - it was out of line of me to refer to your staff as idiots, and I apologise for that, they actually handled my rather irate call well for the most of it. Of course, when I asked for a manager, they were "all in a meeting", and I had to insist before one was found.
I still believe that for a manager to need bother a director (of a company the size of Afrihost) over a matter of R62 is idiocy though, but it's not the staff's fault that they have their hands ties like that.
Here's the reality, our website CLEARLY states that this is the case, before you purchase the anything from us, and the onus is entirely upon the purchaser to ensure that they have read and understood the relevant information before they enter into an agreement. This is "informed consent". Not only that you have understood the information, but that the seller has made efforts to make you reasonably aware of what's going on.
This is on the Mobile Data page which is clearly visible to any member of the public.
Using all caps for the word CLEARLY does not make the (literally) small print any clearer. You've had customers on MyBB complaining of the exact issue I faced in the past. Yet you chose to address that not by adding a message in the confirmation process to let the user know that their choice of using the existing and in place system of debit order will adversely affect the delivery date, but by sending them an email a couple of hours later, when it's already done and dusted. An email titled "Payment Delayed" that starts with "Debit Order Clearance Delay" in letters much larger than your "CLEARLY" and much, much larger than the small print. It seems to me there are more productive options than the route you chose.
Continuing to refer back to the policy and system does not work in this argument - I'm not asking to be treated outside of your policy, I'm trying to get you to think critically about those policies and systems and hopefully adjust them. Of course, I made the mistake of calling your staff idiots, which means that you can justify ignoring everything I say as ranting. Please prove me wrong (again) by not doing that.
There is no need to wait for debit orders to clear on APN because we don't incur hard costs like providing & provisioning a SIM, packing your parcel and also paying a courier to come out to wherever you are. We simply provision data on a number, and we suspend the service if you payment bounces.
The thing that makes even less sense is that it's a lot easier to reverse a credit card payent than a debit order. But those are fine? Additionally, I can burn through a hell of a lot more then R62 worth of data in 5 days. If I couldn't, you'd not have any customers to annoy. So forgive me for not being convinced that your systems are logical.
The fact remains that you treat your existing customers (and the cost of a SIM isn't all that much) as you would a walk-in you have never dealt with before. The very fact that after a phone call, your accounts department agreed to set aside the delay and commence with shipping on my order also serves as proof that it's not a big deal.
Hope that explains everything for you
There is nothing that you have explained that I didn't understand already.
What would have prevented me getting annoyed enough to post here is amazingly simple. A warning when I selected adding the account to my debit order that it would cause a delay which could be prevented by using a credit card for the initial payment. Simple isn't it? Or a different approach - a quick look at my existing account and the fact that there's never been an issue with my debit orders, and that you've got my domain to hold hostage if I default on my payments, and compare it to the small amount involved and reward your customer's loyalty with a little trust. But I'm prepared to put money on it that if I order something from Afrihost in a year's time, that I'll get no warning, and additionally that the address verification tool will still not work properly.
So why continue to irritate your customers? Why not pay attention to the feedback that they're giving you and consider updating your systems from paranoid to merely cautious? You have issues (like the early capping of users with plenty of bandwidth) that are technically tricky and hard to pin down, but here's a couple that are a doddle to sort out. Why not give them a go?
