I doubt Gian is monitoring his inbox at this time of night. Give him some time, I'm sure he'll reply.
He's a busy man. He is the CEO after all.
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Afrihost POC Network - Afrigreen Feedback
- Thread starter AfriGuy
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I doubt Gian is monitoring his inbox at this time of night. Give him some time, I'm sure he'll reply.
He's a busy man. He is the CEO after all.
Emissary_Of_Pain
Senior Member
LOL ... I did not expect a reply now ... haha ... That is why I said time will tell ...
But my initial prediction was that the only response I will get is the automated mail (if you remember correctly)
So, would you say that currently the best available information (even if you find this thread on mybb forums) is "should be done within the month of October"?
Can you see why this is problematic for customers who feel communication around the issue is poor and as a result have lost faith in Afrihost?
I feel for you as I think you have a tough job. Hopefully it doesn't get tougher in November.
Well I was under the impression that if you cancelled before the 24th it would come in to effect on the 30th.
I gave my notice yesterday and was flashed all sorts of messages saying sorry to see you leave, followed up by two emails saying they were sad to lose me as a customer.
So sad in fact that rather than the 30th, they pulled the plug immediately, closed both ADSL accounts and my "1Gb free for ever" account then removed me from the client zone
The Emails may as well have said "Good riddance", not only have the service levels and network reliability sliped even PR and marketing has taken a nose dive.
Well I get the hint, I won't be back...
I gave my notice yesterday and was flashed all sorts of messages saying sorry to see you leave, followed up by two emails saying they were sad to lose me as a customer.
So sad in fact that rather than the 30th, they pulled the plug immediately, closed both ADSL accounts and my "1Gb free for ever" account then removed me from the client zone
The Emails may as well have said "Good riddance", not only have the service levels and network reliability sliped even PR and marketing has taken a nose dive.
Well I get the hint, I won't be back...
Thank you!Sorry, I'll stop posting.
Commander Jaco
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Glad that Afrigreen seems to have worked out for you, mostly anyway.
Afrigreen has served it's purpose though - we're basing our new production network off of what was tested here. So you can look forward to some great things to come
I have been jumping around between Afrihost and Afrigreen for a few months now it's been working OKAY, but it's really not acceptable.
Now however Afrigreen has simply decided that packet loss and high ping are order of the day(Which I'll bet is tied to the fact that you are "announcing" something), and Afrihost is still as terrible as it was. So I really need to know WTF is happening here because I am getting sick and tired of this it has been actual MONTHS and you guys still aren't sorting out the original network.
As another poster said, you last updated that network status page in JULY! Since then it literally looks like you haven't even bothered to try and do anything? This new announcement seems kinda like a new product you can charge more for or less (and screw us over some other way), we have been testing testing network for you AND PAYING YOU FOR IT.
I don't even know if Afrihost has non "Premium" uncapped, but I've been paying for BUSINESS quality uncapped and I'm getting NONE of it.
I remember getting 180ms ping to EU games (WoW, Dota), now I'm lucky to get 240ms and this is on both networks. I get less latency on Webafrica accounts and if it wasn't for their ridiculous advertising campaign(Seriously what is that in their Uncapped adverts? Are they patronizing customers?) I might have signed up with them.
The only positive thing I have to say is that the Ping to Asia seems a lot better on Afrigreen whilst still on par with Afrihost on Europe (Europe pings are still highish in both cases).
I'm really not happy guys. This announcement better come fast and it better be good news.
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Igor III
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I understand that Afrigreen is setup to be a "test" environment. The question is, where do I get value for money, as I have the same problem on your current "non test" environment - the [email protected] (aka the MTN network)?
Would you be satisfied, if you were in my shoes?
TEXTILE GUY
Honorary Master
The common theme here seems to be ..... its not brilliant, its okay.
I am in a similar boat to these guys.
The network has it moments of joy and then the wheels fall off. During the day, the network seems to be shaped, which is fine, except I have a business account.
I too have been popping between the two accounts - Afrigreen and AfriMTN ... and both have their moments.
Just adding my 2c.
I am in a similar boat to these guys.
The network has it moments of joy and then the wheels fall off. During the day, the network seems to be shaped, which is fine, except I have a business account.
I too have been popping between the two accounts - Afrigreen and AfriMTN ... and both have their moments.
Just adding my 2c.
Gian's mailbox is perpetually full, so he always has an auto-reply on his email - anyone's who's ever mailed him will tell you that. But he definitely replies to as many as he can
FatBoySlim
Expert Member
Gian's mailbox is perpetually full, so he always has an auto-reply on his email - anyone's who's ever mailed him will tell you that. But he definitely replies to as many as he can
Sheesh, they havent fired Gian yet for making Afrihost into a disaster, or wait was that MTN who dropped the ball!
MagicDude4Eva
Banned
Let me just ask the obvious (I used to be with Afrihost for years, but moved on in June after months of issues): Why are you guys still paying for a POC network which has been running for 3 (!) months without any considerable improvement? Surely you would have set yourself a deadline (i.e. "I will try this for xx months and then move on") and then cancelled?
I don't understand why you go pay for a POC service without any guaranteed service levels on a flakey network. AH makes it out that their "new network" is something revolutionary, but to be honest, there are thousands of ISPs out there worldwide which do not have those issues. So it should be simple for AH management to determine if this is a supplier issue, a skills-/staff issue or an infrastructure issue (or perhaps all of it) and then make dramatic changes - none of this has really happened.
In my books, a POC is something which is near-production ready and you run it to apply the final tweaks and systems would work 90% of the time. To me it does not look like this is the case and for most people affected there seems to be no consistent improvement since the start of the POC. I think there are a number of other ISPs out there who offer very compelling and affordable solutions without the daily headaches you experiencing with AH. Unless AH executives make drastic changes to their staff and their business, the company will be out of business within 12 months (or become an iBurst).
I don't understand why you go pay for a POC service without any guaranteed service levels on a flakey network. AH makes it out that their "new network" is something revolutionary, but to be honest, there are thousands of ISPs out there worldwide which do not have those issues. So it should be simple for AH management to determine if this is a supplier issue, a skills-/staff issue or an infrastructure issue (or perhaps all of it) and then make dramatic changes - none of this has really happened.
In my books, a POC is something which is near-production ready and you run it to apply the final tweaks and systems would work 90% of the time. To me it does not look like this is the case and for most people affected there seems to be no consistent improvement since the start of the POC. I think there are a number of other ISPs out there who offer very compelling and affordable solutions without the daily headaches you experiencing with AH. Unless AH executives make drastic changes to their staff and their business, the company will be out of business within 12 months (or become an iBurst).
I get your point here, and I think it's definitely our intention to give you the best info we can. However, the reason there are no dates yet is that some final infrastructure has to be in place before we can initiate certain cutover processes, like IPC going live, initial hardware testing, etc. So we're not being evasive, that is simply that nature of a rollout of this nature. When those milestones are achieved, we can give more information and the idea is to covey that message to our clients wherever we can.
The intention is to cutover as soon as possible to give ourselves as much time as possible to manage the transition and to make it as smooth as possible for clients while both MTN and AfriGreen Production are running concurrently.
Well I was under the impression that if you cancelled before the 24th it would come in to effect on the 30th.
I gave my notice yesterday and was flashed all sorts of messages saying sorry to see you leave, followed up by two emails saying they were sad to lose me as a customer.
So sad in fact that rather than the 30th, they pulled the plug immediately, closed both ADSL accounts and my "1Gb free for ever" account then removed me from the client zone
The Emails may as well have said "Good riddance", not only have the service levels and network reliability sliped even PR and marketing has taken a nose dive.
Well I get the hint, I won't be back...
That is definitely how it should work, it would depend on the manner in which you cancelled. This sounds like it was via our Double Money Back guarantee, which is the only scenario where something like that should ever happen.
Please PM me, I'd like to look into that for you either way. We definitely don't want to give that impression with clients who are leaving us, for whatever reason
There is definitely no intention to squeeze the network to announce price increases or anything of that nature. In fact, I can hardly recall when we've ever raised our prices, except when we've ended promotions where people feel this is tantamount to a price increase.
The announcement is us moving over to the full production version of the Afrigeen network, which we have planned to give a great experience (as we've seen in this thread) but with major improvements that were not possible on a POC level, like local IPC and expanded national capacity for the best performance at all times. Once this is fully deployed and stable, we'll also be able to look at the numbers and review our pricing in favour of our clients - which is also a major component of our decision to move to a new network.
FatBoySlim
Expert Member
My points exactly. Afrihost must be laughing at how dumb these people are that they have strung along for months who pay them and they test and report the network back on this forum. Maybe im missing something here, or perhaps this is AH staff who get free internet and who post on here to make it look as if people still care.
We definitely have seen much better performance in general, however there were always some limitations due to the POC nature of Afrigreen. We expect that many of these issues (especially due to additional latency from using a single national IPC) will simply go away with us having IPC in 3 major centres on the full production network.
I just also want to mention that we are still always working on the MTN network for the best performance until we leave then, remember that 99% of our clients are still on MTN, and we've definitely seen performance improve in general. However, we know that performance is still not where it should be. The best possible solution in terms of turnaround and lasting solution is cutting over to the new production network as quickly as possible.
I don't think that is correct at all. To deploy a full production network, with IPC in major regions and capacity to run out national network would be impractical, and not be manageable to the extent that we could derive meaningful insights in a short period of time. There would simply be too many variables, to much data, and it would pose the risk of massive failure. It makes sense to recreate a much smaller network, on a smaller scale, and simulate conditions as closely as possible. We did this with our MTN network change, and we've done exactly the same here, so I think our experience is definitely that this is the right approach.
I think you're making a lot of very fast and loose statements about skill levels and the company going out of business, and that's really very unfair and not based on any kind of factual investigation. Not sure what your intention is, since you have already decided to leave. Maybe respect other's right to do the same
CTBP
Executive Member
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I have no intention of hanging around if this is the way the network will be running, here I am paying for "business uncapped" and getting what I would call cheap shaped uncapped, I remember when I first signed up, it was a dream to use your product with great streaming, browsing and downloading, these days you can only stream, the browsing is terrible the downloads don't work during office hours even though this is a business account, Afrigreen is a fail in my opinion and feels like I have been downgraded, there really is no point hanging around nothing has changed in months, nothing on the MTN network has changed in months, but promises and promises and nothing happens. Pointless, I am wasting my money here!
I think accusing the people in this thread of being dumb is pretty insulting. If you made your own choice, that's fine, but other people will make their choice for their own reasons. That's their right, and don't think it's right to label them as anything for doing so
The only staff that post here are reps (which are clearly marked as Rep accounts) so again, I think the forumites deserve a little more respect for their opinions.
I totally understand what you are saying here. I can promise that every bit of income from DSL that is not going towards paying current network costs (and quite a bit from Afrihost's side) is going towards putting this new network in place as quickly as possible. I know that this is Afrihost's problem and not the client's, but I just want to assure you that we're not laughing all the way to the bank, as it were. We definitely understand the implications and we're doing absolutely everything we can to get things back on track. I can also promise that our management are going to do everything we can to reward our loyal clients and also ensure that we don't repeat the mistakes we've made in the past.
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