Fibrestream Ghosting us

B

b0nesZA

Active Member
Joined
May 18, 2010
Messages
47
Reaction score
8
Not sure where else to turn to and asking for advice, reading am the Twitter feed for fibrestream and guys in my area. It’s one of a few things,
fibrestream has been cut off from vumatel due to none payment
Fibrestream has sold off its customers to a another isp
Fibrestream has no support staff

Any ideas on how to get support, vumatel call centre does not exist and I need vumatel to release the line to migrate to a new isp, I phoned vumatel sales and they said the isp has to release but it’s impossible since I know off 3 people being on hold for 2 hours+ and getting to position #1 and just not getting any contact with fibrestream.

TLDR fibrestream is ghosting its customers and we need to move to a new isp; how if they don’t release the line?
 
I am with Fibrestream our fibre line has been down since 11h39 yesterday 22nd June 2021. They are saying that it is VUMATEL technical issues BUT other community members in our area are with VUMATEL through telkom and they are running fine. I have tried to call them from 11h48 Monday 22 June 2021 up to 09h03 today 23rd June 2021 a total of 31 times and no answer from any life form only an automated answering service advising that VUMATEL has technical issues and there is no available agent and the call is cut. I have also sent an email this morning to them and was issued a ticket number at 07h16 this morning to get a notification that my ticket has been closed at 09h19. This is absolutely disgusting service. I will stop all payment to them and bill them for all additional costs to get my company up and running again as well as sue them for all loss of income.
 
My fibre went down at 11am yesterday. I did some troubleshooting and, when I was convinced it was the ISP (Fibrestream), I tried calling them. The line was busy. I tried 4 more times over the next hour with the same result. I then emailed them and an hour later they responded to say that it was an issue with Vumatel. This is strange because I checked with my neighbours while troubleshooting (they're also with Vumatel but their ISP's are Afrihost and CISP), and their internet was working fine.

Their line was busy the entire day. We tweeted at Vumatel and they advised that they are not aware of any issues. On Twitter, I can see tweets that people from all around the country on Fibrestream are being affected by the outage.

I took over this account from the previous owner because it was the easiest and fastest way to avoid possible downtime (I work from home and internet is an essential service). Since then, I've had multiple issues with Fibrestream's service. The quality of their service has been absolutely terrible. I'm on 100/100 and my internet would regularly drop below 10mbps. Their support team is clueless and refuses to do ACTUAL diagnoses, I kept getting generic responses. So I decided to cancel. I'm on a month to month account. They have a 20 business day notice period, so I sent the cancellation email on the 23rd (just to be safe). They responded 3 days later and told me that I need to pay a cancellation fee of R1099 (same as my monthly fee). I figured this was some sort of claw back or something, but after asking for clarity and reading their terms and conditions, it turns out this is an arbitrary charge, i.e. they do it because they can. It's ridiculous. No other ISP does this. Are they allowed to do this? So I decided not to cancel and do some research on what I can do to avoid this cancellation fee.

Fast forward to this morning. It's 10am at the time of writing this post and we're still down. I've tried calling and I've tried emailing them, the line is busy and I've received no response from them. In fact, they've closed all the tickets that I've logged. My work is being affected and I don't know what to do. I wish there was a way I could cancel with them immediately and move to a new ISP. I feel stuck and it sucks.
 
Update from Vumatel, they have officially cancelled fibrestream, you need to contact vumatel to transfer to another isp
 
Apparently we are all waiting on vumatel to engage another isp, might be worthwhile for your management team to take all the customers. Prob a good couple hundred....

But can’t do anything until they release the line at this point
 
b0nesZA said:
Apparently we are all waiting on vumatel to engage another isp, might be worthwhile for your management team to take all the customers. Prob a good couple hundred....

But can’t do anything until they release the line at this point
Click to expand...
Unlikely, you will still need to apply with another ISP.
 
Hi everyone.

Thank you for all the messages.

I have contacted our Vumatel SDM and were advise that the normal migrations need to be followed as Vumatel has suspended Fibre stream and has not terminated clients lines so existing services should still be active.

The normal migration rules apply where you request cancellation of your current service and once the current ISP has cancelled we can submit a migration order.
 
We cannot request cancellation from Fibrestream. Phone lines are down and no one responds to emails.
Seems like the shop is closed!
 
netstrider said:
Potential article here @rpm
Click to expand...

Yes, agree. There is a problem with consumer rights here. Customers have no service from their ISP but are also not in a position to move as the FNO can't (or won't).

This has concerned me since moving from ADSL to fibre (and making one subsequent ISP move on fibre). It is difficult to move, and the lock in is not necessarily necessary (it isn't on Openserve's FNO by all appearances).

And, if one ISP is having problems on its network, it is impossible to temporarily move to another until the problem is resolved (like we used to be able to do on ADSL).

In the UK this has been a problem for years, on both ADSL and fibre, but Oftel (regulator) recently ruled that the process is too onerous and needs to change. I haven't followed up with what is happening there more recently.

I have raised this issue on the forum previously but told the issue is too technically difficult. But it isn't, it just requires a shared radius server (like Openserve has on its FNO network).

Personally I think this is an FNO problem, and the ISPs are quite happy to continue with it because it locks a customer in for at least a month.

Our telecoms regulator (ha ha) is unlikely to do anything about it either as they're useless.

The only bodies that might make this move in a favourable direction for consumers is the competition commission or the consumer commission.

I think there is definitely a story here, and I think all three regulatory bodies should be approached for comment, along with all the FNOs and ISPs.
 
I'm affected with Fibre Stream going belly up. One of their sales guys called me today saying the same we all know, Vuma pulled the plug on them and the line has been released back to Vumatel. Vumatel consulted called me like 15 minutes ago with ideas for ISP in the price range 10:10 R699 Fibrestream was offering.
Now the search is on for a good alternative.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X