Afrihost POC Network - Afrigreen Feedback

[whippey]

@AfriGenie

So its been one month and a week of horror with Afrihost.

After ranting out my frustrations to the social media handler who did not want to take accountability, was extremely rude and ignored my answers completely and gave me copy and paste responses I finally received my "Afrigreen" account ...only after proving how inconsiderate he was towards me ...

All round, the speeds for downloads and browsing are snappy but still having major issues with constant ISP Drops, piss poor online gaming performance and streaming bufferings ....

It has been a full month and a half now ... my patience is gone and on the verge of regrettably moving over to another ISP...

Are we able to get an ETA when we will see speedy networking speeds again?

I do not want the hassle of switching to another ISP which is Admin I simply do not have time for and I have been a happy, loyal and satisfied customer for about three years now.

Worst thing is .. I am paying R1300 per month for ADSL Data, Afrihost Mobile Data, Telkom DSL + Line rental and just ****ing time towards Afrihost but still have to fork out extra dosh with my Alt ISP so I get decent internet performance !!!

 

[AfriGenie]

@AfriGenie

So its been one month and a week of horror with Afrihost.

After ranting out my frustrations to the social media handler who did not want to take accountability, was extremely rude and ignored my answers completely and gave me copy and paste responses I finally received my "Afrigreen" account ...only after proving how inconsiderate he was towards me ...

All round, the speeds for downloads and browsing are snappy but still having major issues with constant ISP Drops, piss poor online gaming performance and streaming bufferings ....

It has been a full month and a half now ... my patience is gone and on the verge of regrettably moving over to another ISP...

Are we able to get an ETA when we will see speedy networking speeds again?

I do not want the hassle of switching to another ISP which is Admin I simply do not have time for and I have been a happy, loyal and satisfied customer for about three years now.

Definitely sounds like things could have gone better.

As much as I want AfriGreen to be a complete product, it is undoubtedly a work in progress. When you say ISP Drops, this is definitely something we need to look into. To do this you will need to use that Report Issue button on your AfriGreen's Connectivity page on the ClientZone.

Our Team is working on AfriGreen round the clock - quite literally at this point - and we are addressing each issue in full and keep working on each issue until it is resolved.

Similarly with your games, we will need to know which games are being problematic, our new software is lightyears ahead of the old network software, but there are still exceptions and traffic types that we need to add. There have already been major improvements on AfriGreen, and with your help we'll make damn sure it is one of the best ADSL networks it can be,

 

[whippey]

Definitely sounds like things could have gone better.

As much as I want AfriGreen to be a complete product, it is undoubtedly a work in progress. When you say ISP Drops, this is definitely something we need to look into. To do this you will need to use that Report Issue button on your AfriGreen's Connectivity page on the ClientZone.

Our Team is working on AfriGreen round the clock - quite literally at this point - and we are addressing each issue in full and keep working on each issue until it is resolved.

Similarly with your games, we will need to know which games are being problematic, our new software is lightyears ahead of the old network software, but there are still exceptions and traffic types that we need to add. There have already been major improvements on AfriGreen, and with your help we'll make damn sure it is one of the best ADSL networks it can be,

Thanks for the detailed response.

Main areas of deep pain:

- Netflix streaming at 480p (Should be getting a stable 720p)
- Steam Streaming - Jesus the buffering is felt hard here !!!
- battlefield 4 + Red Orchestra 2 - both have high pings - I used to jam BF4 EU servers with around 160-170 ping...nowadays its 229 with me teleporting every where - Switch to WebAfrica anfd I cruise at a 155ms ping Smooth as butter

Again, thanks for the assurance that your team is working around the clock...well so to speak...but its really affecting us users here. I do not want to sit here waiting for this glorious network for another six months or so...that is not going to happen...is there no ways you can get an ETA for us?

 

[JesseG]

Okay, so streaming on Afrigreen has been relatively poor today...Videos sometime auto detect to 240p....
What used to be around 7000+kbps on stats nerds, this now shows anywhere between 1800-5000kbps....
What happened? Youtube was fine and please don't say it's because of Windows 10....

 

[i.got~issues]

Okay, so streaming on Afrigreen has been relatively poor today...Videos sometime auto detect to 240p....
What used to be around 7000+kbps on stats nerds, this now shows anywhere between 1800-5000kbps....
What happened? Youtube was fine and please don't say it's because of Windows 10....

Ya... and it seems like they are testing the shaper tonight as well... download throughput nowhere near previous speeds, no matter what the source might be, also torrents running at sub 100kB/s speeds.

Switch to non Afrihost ISP and streaming without issue, downloads fly and torrents hitting the >500kB/s speed.

 

[sp00ff]

My afrigreen connection has had a few dips over the last few days but today it has just been an unstable mess. The ONLY reason I haven't found another ISP yet is that I don't want to pay prorata for the last 3 days of the month. Unfortunately even the prospect of paying a full months subscription for 3 days is better than dealing with this sh*tty connection.

I'm out, cheers.

 

[dee4dog]

My afrigreen connection has had a few dips over the last few days but today it has just been an unstable mess. The ONLY reason I haven't found another ISP yet is that I don't want to pay prorata for the last 3 days of the month. Unfortunately even the prospect of paying a full months subscription for 3 days is better than dealing with this sh*tty connection.

I'm out, cheers.

Thought i would give this new afrihost network a try tonight......agree, but "Sh*ytty" would be to kind a word, totally unusable crap!!!

 

[Bryn]

Wow. The Afrigreen connection died completely for me a few minutes ago. Rebooting router does nothing - connection is stone dead. Just when my Windows 10 download was at 93%. Thanks guys.

Switched back to the regular AH account and internet is working.

 

[Rickster]

Wow. The Afrigreen connection died completely for me a few minutes ago. Rebooting router does nothing - connection is stone dead. Thanks guys.

Switched back to the regular AH account and internet is working.

Same.

 

[Splatgrave]

Wow. The Afrigreen connection died completely for me a few minutes ago. Rebooting router does nothing - connection is stone dead. Just when my Windows 10 download was at 93%. Thanks guys.

Switched back to the regular AH account and internet is working.

Same here. Thank jebus I'm done with my Windows update.

 

[21stcn]

@AfriGenie

So its been one month and a week of horror with Afrihost.

After ranting out my frustrations to the social media handler who did not want to take accountability, was extremely rude and ignored my answers completely and gave me copy and paste responses I finally received my "Afrigreen" account ...only after proving how inconsiderate he was towards me ...

All round, the speeds for downloads and browsing are snappy but still having major issues with constant ISP Drops, piss poor online gaming performance and streaming bufferings ....

It has been a full month and a half now ... my patience is gone and on the verge of regrettably moving over to another ISP...

Are we able to get an ETA when we will see speedy networking speeds again?

I do not want the hassle of switching to another ISP which is Admin I simply do not have time for and I have been a happy, loyal and satisfied customer for about three years now.

Worst thing is .. I am paying R1300 per month for ADSL Data, Afrihost Mobile Data, Telkom DSL + Line rental and just ****ing time towards Afrihost but still have to fork out extra dosh with my Alt ISP so I get decent internet performance !!!

whippey I feel your pain. I've been trying very hard to restrain myself on this. My business is being hampered so here is my little rant. I didn't want to waste an hour writing this tonight. I was meant to be working but my internet is down.

From what I understand, in a nutshell, Afrihost oversubscribed their network (with related MTN merger). They had the opportunity to look to the West at internet usage growth trends before signing thousands of users onto cheap uncapped, just as Eskom had the opportunity to plan for the future. They didn't need to continue offering specials on business packages and pretend everything was going to be ok, but they did. And then it broke. Maybe I am missing the details but no one can argue that they messed up. This blunder is akin to Eskom's **** up -- lack of foresight; collapse; consumer pays for it in full.

So it is broken. How do they respond?

With my 'business' account periodically useless, I need to buy capped gigs from webafrica for my life to continue to function. Couple hundred a month. This is not compensated for by a reduction or refund for partial service from AH.

Aside from a vague network notification and social media engagement upon complaint, there is no email, announcement or stipulation that service is running sub par, no formal apology. The customer must just struggle until they are gatvol and then call (the poor) support staff whom, if we are honest, can't do anything but stall and mislead and who don't deserve the abuse they must be getting.

And then we sign up to be beta (alpha?) testers of a 'POC' network which shows promise but is inadequate. We sign up for this service not because it is some fun experiment but because we are so desperate, so SICK of problems from SA telecoms and ISPs and all service providers who just f u c k us all day, every day in this country. We will try anything to just not have to fight and complain for a single month, like it used be with Afrihost.

So why do we willingly test Afrihost's network as guinea pigs for free, without demanding a refund or discount, without going to the NCC, or putting up billboards? Is it because they have a clued up public relations team? A white man in a super hero costume who engages us like one of us even though he is just a specialised mouthpiece for a big corporate greed machine?

With Eskom we know there is nothing we can do but go off the grid or buy a generator or stock up on tuna and bottled water, because the problem won't be fixed and the fat cats will continue to get fatter. Why though do we take so much ka k from Afrihost? We know they are TRYING and we know they CARE so much about us and that they have provided good service in the past. But we are just being exploited now and we take it because they have shiny PR. South Africa syndrome. We think we have no power as consumers because we are used to being bullied.

Imagine this: Running our businesses while TESTING an unstable, unproven network for an ISP for free that no longer provides the service we are still paying for in FULL. SIS!!!!!

Disgusting. Give them a deadline and then go somewhere else. We need to enforce evolution here.

 

[Danie_V]

Mine has been fine the last week in Cape Town but I had some short outages last night. However this evening (29th July) I've had longish period with pages just timing out. Really bad. I even switched DNS servers and was no better.

 

[KoolDaffy]

Line dropping again.


Either that or just incredibly slow.

 

[Splatgrave]

Totally in the crapper tonight.

 

[kohlhtor]

Can not start any VPN tonight slow browsing

 

[mpdjhb]

Afrihost/Telkom ran beautifully on Tuesday. Felt like I was in a 1st world country for a day.
Wednesday back to the usual cr@p.
So far today its shaky.

 

[acp]

Have to echo most sentiments above.

Very poor performance for me last night.
The kind that makes you give up and go to bed crying...

My two options to connect to work network were both dead, neither MS Direct Access nor VPN would connect to any server, locally or internationally.

Is this setting the tone for August?

 

[AfriMan]

Morning guys

Looks like we saw quite a few disconnections last night, I know our team were running tests all day yesterday and did give us a heads up about possible disconnections.

Hopefully we're out of the woods now, will post further updates through the day

 

[AfriMan]

whippey I feel your pain. I've been trying very hard to restrain myself on this. My business is being hampered so here is my little rant. I didn't want to waste an hour writing this tonight. I was meant to be working but my internet is down.

From what I understand, in a nutshell, Afrihost oversubscribed their network (with related MTN merger). They had the opportunity to look to the West at internet usage growth trends before signing thousands of users onto cheap uncapped, just as Eskom had the opportunity to plan for the future. They didn't need to continue offering specials on business packages and pretend everything was going to be ok, but they did. And then it broke. Maybe I am missing the details but no one can argue that they messed up. This blunder is akin to Eskom's **** up -- lack of foresight; collapse; consumer pays for it in full.

So it is broken. How do they respond?

With my 'business' account periodically useless, I need to buy capped gigs from webafrica for my life to continue to function. Couple hundred a month. This is not compensated for by a reduction or refund for partial service from AH.

Aside from a vague network notification and social media engagement upon complaint, there is no email, announcement or stipulation that service is running sub par, no formal apology. The customer must just struggle until they are gatvol and then call (the poor) support staff whom, if we are honest, can't do anything but stall and mislead and who don't deserve the abuse they must be getting.

And then we sign up to be beta (alpha?) testers of a 'POC' network which shows promise but is inadequate. We sign up for this service not because it is some fun experiment but because we are so desperate, so SICK of problems from SA telecoms and ISPs and all service providers who just f u c k us all day, every day in this country. We will try anything to just not have to fight and complain for a single month, like it used be with Afrihost.

So why do we willingly test Afrihost's network as guinea pigs for free, without demanding a refund or discount, without going to the NCC, or putting up billboards? Is it because they have a clued up public relations team? A white man in a super hero costume who engages us like one of us even though he is just a specialised mouthpiece for a big corporate greed machine?

With Eskom we know there is nothing we can do but go off the grid or buy a generator or stock up on tuna and bottled water, because the problem won't be fixed and the fat cats will continue to get fatter. Why though do we take so much ka k from Afrihost? We know they are TRYING and we know they CARE so much about us and that they have provided good service in the past. But we are just being exploited now and we take it because they have shiny PR. South Africa syndrome. We think we have no power as consumers because we are used to being bullied.

Imagine this: Running our businesses while TESTING an unstable, unproven network for an ISP for free that no longer provides the service we are still paying for in FULL. SIS!!!!!

Disgusting. Give them a deadline and then go somewhere else. We need to enforce evolution here.

I understand your points here, but I do think we need to look at this from the point of view that we are where we are now. Whichever path we follow from this point is going to require investment and patience. You're right that everyone has a choice, but evolution comes from growth and working together. Ultimately, for a company to evolve and be better, it must work with it's clients. I believe that the clients who are giving us their time and patience will see the reward in a better network, better service and having invested in a relationship with a company they can trust and relate to.

 

[angelblaze]

afrigreen has been up and completely down frequently for the last hour.