Afrihost New Network Feedback - Part 2

Status
Not open for further replies.
AG would it not have made sense, to offer Free time to those R299 and above, and give double data to those below. It would mean that users on R299 and above benefit and those below also have something to add along with the 00:00 to 8am free data.

I think the frustration is, that people below R299 have seen their double data get taken away, and are forced to spend extra to get more data.

+1 Offer this man a job!
 
I don't know how this slipped past you guys, but we (clients) HATE any form of shaping on capped accounts! This is why we are Afrihost's customers & not the competitor's.

We totally get that, but ultimately we need to offer products that appeal to all our clients (and potential clients). We still offer Priority-Boosted for the guaranteed premium capped experience.
 
I honestly feel let down. Sorry Afrihost, but this time you really screwed up.
 
Say I am going to go with the priority capped. If I experience increased latency/packet loss, can I claim back as you state it as a priority account, as you've had quite a lot of these network issues recently, as recently as last night.

Shaping should never introduce packet loss, so that would come down to routing, network performance (which is what we want to preserve). I am hoping that this would never happen, but if it did we'd always troubleshoot and find the cause to give you a good internet experience.
 
I just tried to change my package in the client zone but it won't let me - says I can only make 2 changes per month. I made one change at the start of the month so I should still have 1 left. I take it that the change from double data to the new system which has been applied now has counted as the second change. This needs to be sorted out as I want to change my package NOW not next month - I suspect I will not be the only one!
 
We totally get that, but ultimately we need to offer products that appeal to all our clients (and potential clients). We still offer Priority-Boosted for the guaranteed premium capped experience.

AM i think Gian needs to be a bit careful here with priority boosted. If the boost or the experience is not where it should be consistently, then you guys might be in very difficult position. I dont see a problem with trying something new like this, but ultimately the experience for the end user needs to be spot on.

Ive been in the Cellular world a long time, retail etc, and from a business perspective, if you provide a product or a new product and it falls short of expectations, then you are setting yourself up here. You have to carefully plan things around consumer needs, what they want, what they expect, value for money, service and many other things. In theory, packages below R299 as i said, should have maintained double data on a shaped package in the event of strain, while above R299 gets a premium experience, but within limits of course on a user by user basis, rather than an entire network.

If you take user A and he abuses the free data, then there should be a team in place to monitor this sort of usage behaviour on an individual basis, rather than collectively looking at how much strain the network takes, and then shaping the entire user base. Just my 2 cents on this, as im still one happy client who has had a good experience overall from service to the network. :)
 
Say I am going to go with the priority capped. If I experience increased latency/packet loss, can I claim back as you state it as a priority account, as you've had quite a lot of these network issues recently, as recently as last night.

Shaping should never introduce packet loss, so that would come down to routing, network performance (which is what we want to preserve). I am hoping that this would never happen, but if it did we'd always troubleshoot and find the cause to give you a good internet experience.

As was not said, and reading between the lines, your money will never be refunded.
 
So after 7 years with Afrihost, it seems that it is time to move on. This is quite disappointing news. The major seller for me from Afrihost was the unshaped. Still deciding whether to wait around for a month and see how it goes or just move.

I think if I can get a good deal at the competitors it will be goodbye. I am just irritated that the two main reason I convinced family members to move to Afrihost are now as good as gone: Freetime and Unshaped. So I will have to find someone new to move them to.
 
As was not said, and reading between the lines, your money will never be refunded.

We stick by our double money back guarantee, but if you been with us longer than that, we need to troubleshoot and figure out what is causing the issue. Where we are wrong, we've always done the right thing by our client.
 
14-12-2016 09:16 AM - From January, only packages from R299 and above will continue to receive Free-Time. All other Capped DSL packages will continue to receive After Hours data.
14-12-2016 12:08 PM - I see Double Data is gone from the capped products?
14-12-2016 01:02 PM - Hey Guys :) I see some of you guys have noticed that we've made a few changes to our Capped packages. We've now launched two variations. Priority Boosted Capped packages, which are unshaped, will receive half the data allocation as Shaped Capped packages at the same price. This means we've made double data permanent on Shaped Capped packages. I have to stress that on the Shaped Capped packages we reserve the right to shape, and will not actively be shaped, our Uncapped packages will still be shaped first.

All in a span of less than four hours. Looks to me like the Left hand doesn't know what the Left hand is doing, to hell with the right hand.

I said all along that the packages were getting to confusing and the introduction of Afrihost+ was nothing more than insurance for the FUD factor. Complex packages that hide options and are billed as benefits, no mater how untenable, are not in the consumer benefit.

All this does is prove that Capped accounts have always been shaped, they don't call it shaping they use words like Cached, prioritised and optimized, that is why you have to use their flaky DNS servers so that traffic stays in the afrihost network on hijacked IP address it hit a local cache, not the actual source you addressed, but anything other than a one to one pear connection is shaping.

Afrihost user base is largely Home users but the traffic is calculated in business hours, hence the constant "We have sufficient Bandwidth and No congestion was noticed" statements. The congestion is after hours, especially in Cape Town, and that is how the 18 hours free time worked, it was unused data in business hours in the hope you would download rather than stream TV content.

If you do want to stream or game use a business ISP, they cost more but have excess data in the evenings when the bulk of the clients are offline and they truly are unshaped or as a not to Afrihost not "consistently and aggressively bandwidth managed".

You also have the benefit of knowing you get what you budget for, without threat of double data falling away and unshaped becoming shaped for only a small extra fee.

My mobile data is good for now but I will avoid Afrihost for landline data from now on.

Rather just be honest, not try to polish the turd and tell us that double data is now permanent when what you mean is that you are now shaped unless you pay us double.
 
Last edited:
I just tried to change my package in the client zone but it won't let me - says I can only make 2 changes per month. I made one change at the start of the month so I should still have 1 left. I take it that the change from double data to the new system which has been applied now has counted as the second change. This needs to be sorted out as I want to change my package NOW not next month - I suspect I will not be the only one!

We had to introduce that change with people abusing our recent R1 promotion by doing multiple upgrades and downgrades to avoid paying for the product. You will definitely be able to make that change in the new month, otherwise email [email protected] and we can review on our side.
 
AM i think Gian needs to be a bit careful here with priority boosted. If the boost or the experience is not where it should be consistently, then you guys might be in very difficult position. I dont see a problem with trying something new like this, but ultimately the experience for the end user needs to be spot on.

Ive been in the Cellular world a long time, retail etc, and from a business perspective, if you provide a product or a new product and it falls short of expectations, then you are setting yourself up here. You have to carefully plan things around consumer needs, what they want, what they expect, value for money, service and many other things. In theory, packages below R299 as i said, should have maintained double data on a shaped package in the event of strain, while above R299 gets a premium experience, but within limits of course on a user by user basis, rather than an entire network.

If you take user A and he abuses the free data, then there should be a team in place to monitor this sort of usage behaviour on an individual basis, rather than collectively looking at how much strain the network takes, and then shaping the entire user base. Just my 2 cents on this, as im still one happy client who has had a good experience overall from service to the network. :)

We definitely have those controls in place and we're introducing these processes to ensure we have the space to control any potential abuse and never put our client's experience at risk. I know Gian consider these things extremely carefully and while he may seem like he shoots from the hip, he is actually very methodical and meticulous (more like a scout sniper) :)
 
What difference does Afrihost+ make? So the options in my email are: 300+300 Double and 150+150 Priority. Is the +300/150 because I have Afrihost+?
 
So after 7 years with Afrihost, it seems that it is time to move on. This is quite disappointing news. The major seller for me from Afrihost was the unshaped. Still deciding whether to wait around for a month and see how it goes or just move.

I think if I can get a good deal at the competitors it will be goodbye. I am just irritated that the two main reason I convinced family members to move to Afrihost are now as good as gone: Freetime and Unshaped. So I will have to find someone new to move them to.

I am definitely sorry you feel this way. Those free promotional benefits are not gone, but unfortunately we simply could not maintain them indefinitely. We did say, when we introduced them, that we could only guarantee them for a certain period (which was extended in both cases) but we just couldn't maintain that for everyone and we had to find a way to keep them for as many clients as possible :(
 
We definitely have those controls in place and we're introducing these processes to ensure we have the space to control any potential abuse and never put our client's experience at risk. I know Gian consider these things extremely carefully and while he may seem like he shoots from the hip, he is actually very methodical and meticulous (more like a scout sniper) :)
:) good. Now where is my job? :D
 
All in a span of less than four hours. Looks to me like the Left hand doesn't know what the Left hand is doing, to hell with the right hand.

I said all along that the packages wer getting to confusing and the introduction of Ahfihost+ was nothing more than insurance for the FUD factor. Complex packages that hide options and are billed as benefits, no mater how untenable, are not in the consumer benefit.

All this does is prove that Capped accounts have always been shaped, they don't call it shaping they use words like Cached, prioritised and optimized, that is why you have to use their flaky DNS servers so that traffic stays in the afrihost network on hijacked IP address it hit a local cache, not the actual source you addressed, but anything other than a one to one pear connection is shaping.

Afrihost user base is largely Home users but the traffic is calculated in business hours, hence the constant "We have sufficient Bandwidth and No congestion was noticed" statements. The congestion is after hours, especially in Cape Town, and that is how the 18 hours free time worked, it was unused data in business hours in the hope you would download rather than stream TV content.

If you do want to stream or game use a business ISP, they cost more but have excess data in the evenings when the bulk of the clients are offline and they truly are unshaped or as a not to Afrihost not "consistently and aggressively bandwidth managed".

You also have the benefit of knowing you get what you budget for, without threat of double data falling away and unshaped becoming shaped for only a small extra fee.

My mobile data is good for now but I will avoid Afrihost for landline data from now on.

Rather just be honest, not try to polish the turd and tell us that double data is now permanent when what you mean is that you are now shaped unless you pay us double.

I don't think this proves that Capped was shaped, not sure how you made that leap, to be honest. We introduced a new product, and are moving people who want to keep double data (but don't mind us reserving the "option" to shape in extreme circumstances) to the new product. The premium capped experience remains as it always has.

You make quite a few assumptions, we have a very diverse mix of home, family and business users, with every possible variation in between. I think all ISPs see the same period of high demand, I doubt there is an ISP that seems peak usage at odd times because they cater only to gamers or heavy downloaders. That's a function of human nature and not how we've structured our network :(
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X