Afrihost/OpenWeb ADSL class-action lawsuit

Arthur said:
Dream on. This is not America. Breach of contract? At best you can recover a few months of your subscription fees. Did you take reasonable steps to mitigate your loss? Were you contractually prevented from using another ISP? No? If your action succeeds (a major if), you'll be lucky if a court awards a refund of two months' subs. Your failure to terminate your month-to-month agreement is evidence enough that your "losses" are notional (a nice way of saying fictitious) and not real. SA courts don't award punitive damages in contract cases.
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You do have a valid point, but the emails I have saved show intentional dishonesty and I believe that I will be able to get everyone refunded many months of subscriptions as long as they have evidence of when it started.

1 person alone will not make a big difference as its probably not more than a few thousand rand, but if we can get a few hundred people involved, we are potentially looking at over a million of rand. That will make a big impact.

Remember that the point of all this is to set precedence, and everyone gets compensated for the money they spent on services they never received.
 
What a passionate bunch of forum lawyers we all are.

I have had to have a rethink of the cause I earlier chose to support.

To be completely honest, I don't think any of us, individually or as a group, have a chance in hell of winning anything in court. And thats purely base don my experiences in court. Our judicial system is such a joke. We will end up a with a judge who will be bamboozled by the responding parties counsel to such an extent that the jusdge will not know WTF is going on. Trust me, I have expernced in the Western Cape High Court myself. I had a clear cut case that a 5 yr old could have ruled on properly and and i lost because the judge admitted to not knowing how Facebook works and dismissed my case due to a lack of expert testimony. I couldn't afford to run the case as a trial.

And neither can any of this angry cyber mob.

There is another way to get what we all want and that is play their game. Read the terms and conditions and tie them up in the very bureaucracy the rely on to protect themselves.

We need to consistently demand support and resolution and we need to not give in on any issue we have. One person sending an email or support request is one thing, but if we coordinate our efforts, and we all send a support request or we all phone their support lines or we all send an email demanding it be escalated to Gian Visser then we will get some results.

Fantasizing about wining a court case is a nice way of venting our anger but its not realistic. In the US we might have a chance, but in SA, our judicial system is made of the same cloth as Eskom, Telkom and the entire goddam SA Government. That cloth looks shiny and has nice decorations on it but its porous and thin and weak.

South Africa is a circus nation and we would be wise not to become part of the show. We need to be intelligent about how we go about dealing with issues like poor service delivery. Individually we are easy to deal with and ignore, but in numbers... its a slightly more difficult prospect to dance around.
 
The first hurdle is trying to find a class with common cause and common injury from a common action, otherwise there's no locus standi for a class action. For every plaintiff who avers rotten service and deception (as you allege) there's a customer (and potential witness) with identical contract and similar connection who suffered no such harm. That is fatal to a class action.

Bottom line: Get another ISP. Don't waste your time on this petty crap. We have far bigger issues to fix. Be faithful to your wife. Love your children. Keep your family intact. Pay your debts. Honour your word. Sponsor a disadvantaged child. Get politically or socially active. Etc.
 
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Arthur said:
Bottom line: Get another ISP. Don't waste your time on this petty crap. We have far bigger issues to fix.
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I'm sorry for what I'm about to say. But its this defeatist attitude that is the at core of why we are in the situation we are in. People like you that are willing to settle. No, my friend. There is no other ISP. They are all as **** as the next one and all we are doing is perpetuating the problem by not dealing with it.

I'm not moving from Afrihost. i make my daily phone call demanding resolution to my problems every day. And I know its in vain but at least I'm doing something to deal with the crap they are serving me.
 
MyLowBandwidth said:
I'm sorry for what I'm about to say. But its this defeatist attitude that is the at core of why we are in the situation we are in. People like you that are willing to settle. No, my friend. There is no other ISP. They are all as **** as the next one and all we are doing is perpetuating the problem by not dealing with it.

I'm not moving from Afrihost. i make my daily phone call demanding resolution to my problems every day. And I know its in vain but at least I'm doing something to deal with the crap they are serving me.
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Hehe. Wisdom also consists in fighting the battles you can win. The OP can't win this one. Any court victory would in any case be pyrrhic.

Of course principles are vital - I don't believe one should ever compromise on principles. But a mistake often made by youth (I am guilty) is turning everything into a principle, and so we are deflected from the important battles and waste our efforts on trivia. Fighting lousy ISP service is only slightly less pointless than fighting lousy cafe service. Just move on and put your money (ie labour) elsewhere.

I admire your determination. But I strongly suggest you terminate your crappy ISP and get one that works for you. And if they're all useless, spend more time in the analogue world. And get vsat.

I and my ISPs have a perfectly proportional, reciprocal and symmetrical loyalty. My money for their service. I can weather short-term problems that hit anything this side of the grave. But there's no vow of mutual and perpetual fidelity.
 
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Arthur said:
Hehe. Wisdom also consists in fighting the battles you can win. The OP can't win this one. Any court victory would in any case be pyrrhic.

Of course principles are vital - I don't believe one should ever compromise on principles. But a mistake often made by youth (I am guilty) is turning everything into a principle, and so we are deflected from the important battles and waste our efforts on trivia. Fighting lousy ISP service is only slightly less pointless than fighting lousy cafe service. Just move on and put your money (ie labour) elsewhere.

I admire your determination. But I strongly suggest you terminate your crappy ISP and get one that works for you. And if they're all useless, spend more time in the analogue world. And get vsat.

I and my ISPs have a perfectly proportional, reciprocal and symmetrical loyalty. My money for their service. I can weather short-term problems that hit anything this side of the grave. But there's no vow of mutual and perpetual fidelity.
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First of all, I really admire your extensive vocabulary. Its seldom that I come across such admirable English.

If 1 person was doing it alone, then the victory will indeed be a pyrrhic one, but if we all stand together then the combined compensation will easily cover legal costs. Even if we got no money out of it, we all stand to gain in the long run as ISPs will fear the intrepid consumer.
 
WeWantSpeed said:
Hello all,

Considering the abysmal performance many users have received from these ISPs(Afrihost / OpenWeb), as well as the utter nonsense and lies they've been trying to feed us when we complain, I am in the process of getting legal counsel wrt a class-action lawsuit against them.

It seems that we have a pretty strong case including false advertising and evading. More info to come soon.

All interested persons can post here. If there are any other ISPs someone would like to include, mention them below as well.
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Omg lol, sorry for the lol, but yea good luck.


/in before nothing comes from this.
 
And this is why service in South Africa is the way it is.


Someone is tired of the ****, and wants to take action. Do we join him? Hell no, we tell him how impossible it is and why he should just forget about trying it.

South Africans have no backbone, they would rather get shafted by bad service than ever complain. They are the best people to have as customers. Thank you for that, you are making people rich for doing very little effort.
 
Whatwhat, I understand where you're coming from. And, yes, "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing" as John Stuart Mill said.

But this isn't that sort of case.

It is not common cause that there is deception and "deliberate lying" by Afrihost. There are many other possible explanations than malintent, as you well know. Incompetence cannot be fixed by lawsuits, or social or political pressure. Any attempt to do is folly.

I wholeheartedly agree that where principles are involved, defeatism is surrender and death. But it's also true that the certain path to failure is taking on battles that cannot be won. Especially when there are alternatives.

You say that "South Africans have no backbone, they would rather get shafted by bad service than ever complain. They are the best people to have as customers". I think there are other explanations. If anything, South Africans are full of complaints. Our lack is in our reluctance to simply shift our custom to those who do provide the service we expect.

If we have a weakness as a society it's that we look to the State (courts, legislature, executive) to solve our problems for us. That's why we're forever trying to rally support, start a movement, get a crowd to join in our crusade - so we can appeal to Caesar to save us. He won't. Ironically, it's that very attitude and approach that disempowers the people.

On a personal note, I have been in business for many years, and even studied it at Columbia and Stanford, so I have both a theoretical and an applied foundation. I have never come across a single instance in the history of the cosmos where service improves because it is legally mandated by legislature or judiciary. Rather the reverse seems to be true: the more the State mandates improved service, the worse it becomes.

You have more power than you think! Use it. Exercise it. Live it. You are a free man, not a vassal, so quit looking at Caesar to empower you - he can't. You still have the freedom to spend your money where you wish, though that liberty is reduced year after year precisely because we suck from Caesar's ever-growing tit.

Remove support from those who fail, and reward those who succeed. Complain if you must, but direct complaints at those who can do something about it, not the world at large. And above all, step up and take personal responsibility for choosing and using the service providers who actually do what you expect.

But trying to use the courts or (heaven forfend) the legislature to get Internet Service Providers to perform better is worse than tilting at windmills. It's surrendering liberty, and that's too a high a price to pay, in my view.

Nothing is more effective in this sort of petty commercial transaction than moving your custom elsewhere. Keep your guns for the Real War, the things worth fighting for. While we still have alternatives, war with any particular ISP is not worth the cost of powder.

Spend your money elsewhere, while you can.
 
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@ Arthur

I do understand where you are coming from, but these companies don't care that you move on. They are happy to make a few bucks out of you before you leave. The only alternative to legal action is to somehow educate everyone to their activities before they go to them in the first place. If you can suggest a viable means of doing so, I am all ears. Whatever accomplishes the given objective I will stand behind.

Also, I am not suggesting we get government to mandate better service, this is known to be ineffective. I am suggesting we give them incentive to provide better service.

Another problem in your logic is when you say to go to a provider that meets your expectations. Please point one out. I would gladly concede to your point if this was a legitimate option.
 
Afriman,

I think you can remember the problems I have experienced 4-5 months ago. Afrihost lied like nobody's business. I was batteling for months with a throttled or shaped internet service.

I recommended Afrihost to my son in Centurion, but he had a very bad experience as well.

Your CEO, Gian Visser does not even respond to complaints when it is addressed to him. HE IS TOO BUSY for his customers, the very people who made it possible for him to open those big offices in Rivonia.

Now Afrihost comes with this LTE deals. (Wow this is expensive. Only R 99 for 2mb)

I think this law suit thing could work. Your company does not care about its customers anymore.

This proves why Chrystal Web walked away with the honours.
 
i really hope something comes from this thread as we are way past the best effort from the isps in this country and just have to pay for it every month
 
electrofreeze said:
i really hope something comes from this thread as we are way past the best effort from the isps in this country and just have to pay for it every month
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I'm afraid that it seems all the naysayers are successfully discouraging consumers from standing up. Class-action is a numbers game, if we don't get enough people involved, the ISPs are just gonna keep getting away with it.
 
WeWantSpeed said:
I'm afraid that it seems all the naysayers are successfully discouraging consumers from standing up. Class-action is a numbers game, if we don't get enough people involved, the ISPs are just gonna keep getting away with it.
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So you started this thread saying:

WeWantSpeed said:
I am in the process of getting legal counsel wrt a class-action lawsuit against them.
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What was the outcome of that? I'm one the naysayers simply because I believe this is a waste of time that will go nowhere. Now I'm no lawyer, so if you obtained legal counsel that says otherwise then I'll be keen to hear about that.
 
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