Their 1st line support has gone entirely to ****. I used to be a huge supporter of AH due to their good support, but the experiences I've had this year has me looking elsewhere. I was banging my head against the table just this morning again...
I asked for my 4 Mbps DSL line to be upgraded to an 8 Mbps line, knowing that I would only get about 7 Mbps due to distance from the exchange. I put in the request on 21/03/2018.
On 23/03/2018 (a Friday evening, granted) my line died completely, due to a line fault that gets worse whenever there is a bad rainstorm. Usually, Telkom only ever comes out to look at the line fault a week after the storm, but by that time the line has recovered, the techie calls all clear, and nothing is fixed. This time, however, the line stayed dead.'
I was told that Telkom's turnaround time on calls like mine is around 48 hours (right), so 2 business days later, I asked for an update to my call - no answer. The ticket also disappeared from the clientzone..
Since my original ticket was gone, and no one replied to my emails, I opened a new support ticket on 27/03/2018. On 28/03/2018 I received a new ticket number from Telkom. On 31/03/2018, I emailed Afrihost to inform them that my line waas syncing, but only at 1.5 MBps and that Telkom had not contacted me yet. I got another canned response. On 02/05/2018 I got a mail from support noting that I had high attenuation on my line, and that a fault ticket was open against it. (I already knew this, AH) Since the fault was 9 days old, I asked for it to be escalated, which, to their credit, they did.
On 04/04/2018 I updated support again, with the fact that my line was completely dead again, and that I was still to hear from Telkom. Later that day I received the same boilerplate Telkom notification that states that a technician has been assigned to my ticket. Since this was the third time I got the same message, I asked for escalation again.
This was only done on 06/04/2018, after which Openserve quickly notified that my line fault was tied to a cable fault - no ETA on a fix. However, I was hoping that if Openserve were to fix this cable fault, my bad weather = bad internet experience would improve. I notified the Support team that I would prefer they fix the cable fault properly, even at the cost of a bad turnaround time. later that day I received a notification that Telkom/Openserve were actively working on my fault. Somewhere in this week, my line started syncing again, but with no connectivity.
On 07/04/2018 the call was escalated to the DSL lines team, who I told that the line had stopped syncing
again. On 08/04/2018, I was informed by support that Telkom had closed my ticket.. The support team had already re-opened the ticket with Telkom, asking me to let them know if I hadn't heard anything from Telkom by the 10th.
I then sent a rude email. I've been without internet for more than two weeks. That meant no gaming online, no Netflix, no Chromecast for local viewing, no working from home without racking up massive mobile data bills (which I did). To Afrihost's credit, Jonno K. handled my irate email well, gave me a call, and managed to get Telkom to do their part by lunchtime the next day. If only he had handled my call initially!
With the line fault being fixed, I asked for a status update regarding my line speed upgrade via email on 09/04/2018 - no response.
I again sent a mail on 23/04/2018. Please note that other than the canned response saying it'll take up to 10 business days to action, I've had no feedback on my line upgrade, a month later. Even CC'ing [MENTION=419248]Gian[/MENTION] didn't get me a response from the support team, only from Gian.
Another mail from me on 02/05/2018 at least resulted in a ticket being opened.. for the same action as on March. Same boilerplate replies that it'll take up to 10 working days. Asking for an update on 03/05/2018 got me a standard reply on 04/05/2018 - 10 working days. Thank you for your patience.
Again, no feedback until 12/05/2018 when I was told that I'm now at 8 Mbps. Rejoice! Finally! Fast internet! I was syncing at a little over 7 Mbps, and I loved it!
Later in the week, though I noticed that my line wasn't stable at the speed all the time, so I logged a call on 19/05/2018. Simple solution, we reduce the speed a little, right? Afrihost support got the ports reset, but my line was now syncing at 5 Mbps, and no faster, in spite of my router and the Clientzone telling me I can go faster.
But there was no further response.. On 24/05/2018 I sent a mail asking for an update, with no response. On 25/05/2018 I sent a mail asking for an update.. no response. On 29/05/2018 I received a mail that my line has been submitted for a re-sync at 8 Mbps.. but a little later I got confirmation that I'm syncing at 6.6 Mbps. Not quite the speed I hoped for, but certainly good enough to keep me happy! Except that it didn't sync at 6.6. On the 30th it was still attempting to sync at 8, which caused loads of disconnects on my end. I sent a mail reporting the problem, which solicited the reply that my line is syncing at 6 Mbps..
Since that mail, my line has been syncing at 4.095 Mbps.. Only barely faster than my old 4 Mbps line! As such I asked for a re-sync at 6.5 Mbps this morning, only to be told that
Unfortunately, due to your distance from the exchange, you can only get 6.6Mbps .
Therefore the 8Mbps regrade order failed.
Please be advised that your line is a 4Mbps line
I'm utterly confused now. Especially since my line speed was pulled down to just a hair's breadth faster than a 4 Mbps line, so that I'd be paying for my up to 8 Mbps line, where it's really just a 4 Mbps line.
I'm over it. Any suggestion for where to take my business next?
