@fishfly - I signed up directly with iBurst in April and
had the option for direct payments. My wife signed up through @lantic some years back and also had the option to avoid debit orders. A co-worker signed up 2 months ago through Vodacom and also had the option for direct debit.
I seem to have the same setup as you (UTD -> Router -> LAN) and also experienced the same challenges with call-centres. In my case I kept a "log" of date/time of incident, call-reference-#, whom I spoke to and brief summary of conversation. This log is now 3 pages long (just for my incident starting on 19th September) - this level of detail (including speedtests) was sufficient enough to
get a free site-visit,
installation of a free directional antenna and
reimbursement of 3GB lost.
No ISP today can afford to loose customers - the broadband market in SA is starting to become highly competitive and with Vodacom / Telkom offering Wimax, Telkom opening up with 3G-data offerings etc, companies are starting to realise that they way the provided customer service needs to change.
I still maintain, that if you have hard facts to backup your case and apply a bit of common sense, you will not face as much frustration. (I learned quickly some years ago, when Eskom incorrectly debited R89,000 from my account instead of R890 - it took 6 months to get my money back).
The sad part about the corporate world is, that you have to escalate to the CIO/CEO or managing executives to get the worker-bees to do their job - iBurst is no exception (and neither is any large financial institution, Vodacom, MTN, Telkom or any other blue-chip company) - as long as there is a human factor involved, you will always face indifference, laziness and incompetence.
You as the consumer are empowered enough to make changes: put a stop-order on your account, cancel your debit-order, don't pay for services not rendered - easy.
BTW - someone should change the topic of this now digressed thread
