Afrihost policy - moving fibre providers

[nf-Stealth]

Greetings!

@AfriGuy @AfriNatic @AfriFella


I was wondering if this is normal ? :

I was initially with Vox/Openserve, then went with Afrihost/Frogfoot since the 200/200 pure fibre with Frogfoot was cheaper than what I was paying for 100/50 with Vox/Openserve.

That was a year ago I moved across to Afrihost/Frogfoot - (Biggest mistake ever, absolutely the worst fibre provider, down weekly, sometimes daily...)

So last month I decided I would prefer a relatively stable connection with Openserve vs the price of Grogfoot, so I cancelled the Afrihost/Frogfoot service, and signed up for an Afrihost/Openserve package.

The Openserve gentleman came on Saturday and today, essentially he didn't need to do much since the installation with Openserve was already up and running, I said I don't need anything activated until the end of the month as I've obviously got the cancellation window and have already paid for the 200/200 Afrihost/Frogfoot and utilizing that.

Today I get an invoice from Afrihost for the Afrihost/Openserve connection for the rest of the month (Nevermind the fact I haven't even had the PPPoE details sent and Openserve isn't DHCP), so I said I would only require it from next month, and I get a snotty response telling me 'I am liable as it was activated by Openserve and Afrihost has provisioned the data allocation'.

Now firstly, why would I want it active now ? Surely someone should have maybe asked, if I knew it would have been activated, I would have said... no wait until the last week of the month, not the start of the month, and additionally, surely you should only 'provision' once you've actually activated it @ the ISP side, ie I've requested the username/pw and given that Bxxx # ?

 

[IamNoone]

The ISP is billed from the moment the fibre provider completes the installation order.

When the technician closes the installation order it is sent to the ISP via api and the service billing starts.

 

[AfriNatic]

Greetings!

@AfriGuy @AfriNatic @AfriFella


I was wondering if this is normal ? :

I was initially with Vox/Openserve, then went with Afrihost/Frogfoot since the 200/200 pure fibre with Frogfoot was cheaper than what I was paying for 100/50 with Vox/Openserve.

That was a year ago I moved across to Afrihost/Frogfoot - (Biggest mistake ever, absolutely the worst fibre provider, down weekly, sometimes daily...)

So last month I decided I would prefer a relatively stable connection with Openserve vs the price of Grogfoot, so I cancelled the Afrihost/Frogfoot service, and signed up for an Afrihost/Openserve package.

The Openserve gentleman came on Saturday and today, essentially he didn't need to do much since the installation with Openserve was already up and running, I said I don't need anything activated until the end of the month as I've obviously got the cancellation window and have already paid for the 200/200 Afrihost/Frogfoot and utilizing that.

Today I get an invoice from Afrihost for the Afrihost/Openserve connection for the rest of the month (Nevermind the fact I haven't even had the PPPoE details sent and Openserve isn't DHCP), so I said I would only require it from next month, and I get a snotty response telling me 'I am liable as it was activated by Openserve and Afrihost has provisioned the data allocation'.

Now firstly, why would I want it active now ? Surely someone should have maybe asked, if I knew it would have been activated, I would have said... no wait until the last week of the month, not the start of the month, and additionally, surely you should only 'provision' once you've actually activated it @ the ISP side, ie I've requested the username/pw and given that Bxxx # ?

Hi,

When you place an order with us we place an order with the provider automatically via an API. This order gets installed asap by the provider and once installed and the provider marks it as completed the API pushes the updates to us and then our system automatically activates.

The cable providers bill us as soon as the line is installed. It would have been best to arrange an installation date closer to the date you need the line when the Openserve called as that would have been the only way to delay the installation and activation to a later date.

 

[ld13]

I was wondering if this is normal ?

100% Normal. If I were you, I would've touched base with Afrihost first...
When I place a first/second/third/... order, I would fully expect Afrihost to kick things into high gear and get it processed yesterday already.

 

[nf-Stealth]

Thanks for the feedback and context, much appreciated!

 

[killerbyte]

Hi,

When you place an order with us we place an order with the provider automatically via an API. This order gets installed asap by the provider and once installed and the provider marks it as completed the API pushes the updates to us and then our system automatically activates.

The cable providers bill us as soon as the line is installed. It would have been best to arrange an installation date closer to the date you need the line when the Openserve called as that would have been the only way to delay the installation and activation to a later date.

The beauty of APIs... workers just see the stock they need to pick, or the address they need to go to. No one even thinks about the fact that the order was placed on a completely different system.

 

[AfriNatic]

The beauty of APIs... workers just see the stock they need to pick, or the address they need to go to. No one even thinks about the fact that the order was placed on a completely different system.

Indeed. We get a large amount of orders every day and it would not be productive to manually place each order so the system places the order automatically with the FNOs that have APIs. The system keeps track of the orders updating the B numbers and once the order is completed activates the account automatically to start billing.