@lantic Customer Abuse

Douglasr said:
I do have a good idea of our service levels, which are by no means perfect
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Dear Mr Reed,

You are very correct in stating they are by no means perfect, in fact, they are little to nowhere close to perfect.

According to the last Vox Financials, the DataPro ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) was sitting at about R4500.
Our Company is currently spending 16x that amount with you guys and certain member’s of your management staff can't even be bothered to respond to our meeting requests or even emails.

So yes Mr Reed, I think you really need to re-evaluate your "Service levels" or lack thereof. Your company has a very serious service level problem which needs to be addressed.
 
rpm said:
Hi Looney

Thanks for the feedback.

Douglas is not only a nice guy, but a really good CEO. More info on him here: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/208402-Douglas-Reed

That is why I believe there is more to this story than meets the eye. There are unreasonable people who are simply out to destroy, independent of the fairness of the case.

This will also not the the first time a really cool CEO has been the target of a disgruntled customer - has happened with many other CEOs who were in fact consumer champions.

I can understand that many people expect CEOs to be merely PR mouthpieces, but I personally like it if they are honest and up-front about what they are doing.
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I agree with you rpm, however, if the OP is trying to cause harm to the company, for whatever reason and the ceo decided to respond on mybb, putting himself in the line of fire, he should have put all the facts on the table, he should have given us all the details that the OP "forgot" to mention. After all, its his responsibility to gain back the trust of people in order to save his company.

If he would have come forward and discredited the OP, i would be thinking differently and not taking the OP's side. Unfortunately thats not the case. He made no attempt whatsoever to discredit the OP and by snapping his mouth with legal action was a no no for me in my books.

I guess thats my opinion. Each to his own :)
 
rpm said:
Hi Looney

Thanks for the feedback.

Douglas is not only a nice guy, but a really good CEO. More info on him here: http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/208402-Douglas-Reed

That is why I believe there is more to this story than meets the eye. There are unreasonable people who are simply out to destroy, independent of the fairness of the case.

This will also not the the first time a really cool CEO has been the target of a disgruntled customer - has happened with many other CEOs who were in fact consumer champions.

I can understand that many people expect CEOs to be merely PR mouthpieces, but I personally like it if they are honest and up-front about what they are doing.
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But why are their hellopeter records so bad, and why is this not the first thread complaining about @lantic's service? If he was a good guy, as the CEO it is his responsibility to make sure good service is delivered.

You might like the guy personally but I think you are backing the wrong horse here.
 
Looney said:
I agree with you rpm, however, if the OP is trying to cause harm to the company, for whatever reason and the ceo decided to respond on mybb, putting himself in the line of fire, he should have put all the facts on the table, he should have given us all the details that the OP "forgot" to mention. After all, its his responsibility to gain back the trust of people in order to save his company.

If he would have come forward and discredited the OP, i would be thinking differently and not taking the OP's side. Unfortunately thats not the case. He made no attempt whatsoever to discredit the OP and by snapping his mouth with legal action was a no no for me in my books.

I guess thats my opinion. Each to his own :)
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Maybe he's tired of responding to the OPs rants?
 
Ancalagon said:
But why are their hellopeter records so bad, and why is this not the first thread complaining about @lantic's service? If he was a good guy, as the CEO it is his responsibility to make sure good service is delivered.

You might like the guy personally but I think you are backing the wrong horse here.
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I have personalty dealt with him and previous companies, and I know for a fact that his personal phone number is always available if you can not sort problems out. In fact I phoned him a couple of times and did I get my problems sorted. There is always 2 sides to a story. I would love to see both sides communications before I jump to conclusions.

If a customer swears at me or make unreasonable demands, I can promise you I would place them last on my list of people I would go out of my way to help as well.
 
I can agree with Elimentals, I have dealt with Doug Reed on a couple of occasions and in my dealings Doug has been and absolute gentleman and acted in the most professional manner.

I believe there are definitely 3 sides to every story and there is probably quite a bit that we have not heard about this issue.

My advice to both parties, take it off-line and resolve the issue, then move on

Let’s all work towards a better internet for SA
 
netaction said:
I can agree with Elimentals, I have dealt with Doug Reed on a couple of occasions and in my dealings Doug has been and absolute gentleman and acted in the most professional manner.

I believe there are definitely 3 sides to every story and there is probably quite a bit that we have not heard about this issue.

My advice to both parties, take it off-line and resolve the issue, then move on

Let’s all work towards a better internet for SA
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Pity it's not Doug Reed internet. Your company is only as strong as it's customer edge.
 
My experience. I signed up for their free adsl offer in Nov 10 which gave me 2GB per month for 6 months. Any amount over this, in a month, would then be chargeable on a per MB rate. I carefully monitored my usage to ensure it was always below 2GB, but then I saw deductions on my Credit Card. When I queried this they replied that my usage, counting from the 23rd of the month had exceeded the 2GB limit. I protested that nowhere did it state that 'month' would be defined in that way, instead of the normal 1st of the month. The Customer Services could not grasp this - after a few e-mails back and forth and more phone calls the reply was 'we are not technical' and referred me to someone 'technical' - he understood. The correction then took 2 months - it had to be agreed my their head-office!
 
I've heard so much from different people about @lantic... they just seem amateur in their dealings. I left Telkom ISP because they service stunk, so I want to go for professionals. For that reason alone, I've gone with Afrihost. They've always been friendly, pleasant and when I have had a couple of queries they've dealt with them swiftly and courteously.

They may not be the cheapest, but they're more than reasonable and, provided I continue to get a good level of service, I'm planning on sticking with them. I'm sure they're not the only good guys, there's probably plenty more (I've heard mixed on WA but mostly +ve) but in fairness, it's not hard to look good when compared to some of the ISPs here in SA :)
 
I just tried to escalate my service request regarding the cancellation of my 2GB free @lantic ADSL account, and the reply I got was:
Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists:

<just hiding real E-mail addr 4 myBB post>@lanticgroup.net
The recipient's mailbox is full and can't accept messages now. Microsoft Exchange will not try to redeliver this message for you. Please try resending this message later, or contact the recipient directly.
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A good CEO/MD is a good foundation/base to build a company on. Too grow/maintain a good company. It needs good staff & processes from the top(normal management level) down.

While I have no reason to belive that Douglas is a bad CEO/MD, I can honestly say that there are people employed by the company that do not hold their job, their management or the company in a high regard.

The otherside is also true: there are people who do their jobs well from management level down.

I have experienced both sides of the coin while helping people that have This company as their ISP.

If I read some of what has been said here & elsewhere I can't help but wonder if the problem does not in some cases(not all) the problems do not start at the reseller, while others start with the customer service the ISP provides.

At the same time there is clearly good customer service being provided by some of their retailers & staff. This is after all not a company that was started 6 months ago. In many ways it has grown since it's early days.

Yes there are things that can be done by the company to improve their customer service. At the same time there is something the customers can do to: if you feel you have a valid point for being disgruntled - there are many ways to say/acheive the same results. & not in a manner where you fling personal insults at people that can open yourself up to other legal processes due to the manner in which you bring yourself accross.

Please can everyone breathe a little???





Ok, now:

Are there any bits of info that is relevant to this discussion that won't have a negative impact on the resolution process that we need to know? (this is to all the relavent parties in this discussion)

(posting from cell - will keep saving post & add to it.) - done.
 
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Venomous said:
Yes there are things that can be done by the company to improve their customer service. At the same time there is something the customers can do to: if you feel you have a valid point for being disgruntled - there are many ways to say/acheive the same results. & not

(posting from cell - will keep saving post & add to it.)
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I see you're posting from your cell.

Which prison ?
 
I been down this kinda road with Adept internet.
Personally I feel that the OP is leaving too much out of his story. I'm not saying Vox is totally innocent, but it seems to me that the op is covering his arse also.

I find it hard to believe that someone in management would verbally abuse a customer because of a hello peter complaint. I'm not saying it didn't happen, I just think that there was a whole lot of other stuff going on. If Vox really did treat all their customers like that then there is no way that they would be functioning as they are. This guy must have done some serious crap to have pissed off so many people to get the reactions that he did. I have been a @lantic customer in the past and I can be a difficult SOB and I never got anything but professional responses. I ended up cancelling my account because they just where not competitive, and their support was a bit crappy but I never got a response like the OP.

Na, I'm sorry OP I dont buy it. Vox are definitely screwing the pooch on the way they are handling this, but to get threatened with legal action publicly by the CEO you need to be some kind of special off pisser. The kind of responses you are getting do not equal the innocence of your described actions.
 
Madman88 said:
Na, I'm sorry OP I dont buy it. Vox are definitely screwing the pooch on the way they are handling this, but to get threatened with legal action publicly by the CEO you need to be some kind of special off pisser. The kind of responses you are getting do not equal the innocence of your described actions.
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Ja I also doubt it's the whole story, but it's also beside the point. @lantic will come out of this worse than anyone else. You've got 200,000 customers and one of them causes you trouble -- maybe he swears at you, threatens you even -- but you don't go online, in public, and put him in his place! You've got 200,000 customers for heaven's sake. They're not paying so maybe one day they can be threatened too.

This whole thread has made everyone look amateur and silly. The OP, @lantic, Doug Reed, Marius Venter, and this genius Johann Botha who posts compliments for his company under his own name. But who of those has the most to lose? @lantic and Doug Reed, probably. Good luck chaps!
 
I've also had problems with @tlantic in the past and I wasn't even a customer. Needless to say I called them to voice my concerns and I was met with the same negative tone and lack of professionalism.

While I do also agree that there are always two sides to a story, in this day and age companies who provide almost a "public" service have to be extremely sensitive to their customers needs and complaints, while taking care to bite the bullet at times, especially when the matter is in the public eye so that they can maintain a good reputation. More often than not a customer will give a company a second chance to redeem themselves. If I don't get the service I expect from the first line of support and escalate the matter to the second line of support and I am met with the same dissatisfaction, that is the second chance blown for the company.

No matter how good a CEO is, or nice guy they might be, they have failed, (in my humble opinion), at following one of the most basic rules, if not the only rule of customer service which is, THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT. While we all know this not always the case it is besides the point, because without customers there would be business. I think it's great that the CEO got involved in the forum/topic, however I believe a more appropriate response would have been: "Dear Mr So & So, we are sorry to hear of your dissatisfaction with our company/services, could we take this opportunity to get in touch with you by other means to discuss in more detail, please contact me on etc etc."

Even though these two individuals have spoken in the past and maybe not had the most polite of conversations it would have been the right move on the CEO's part to diffuse the matter ASAP even if it meant having to swallow his pride. It may well be that the OP is a unreasonable/difficult customer and is truly in the wrong, but never air your dirty laundry in public I say.

The new era of ISP's in South Africa like your Afrihosts and your WebAfricas have the right idea. They provide a service to their customers on a month to month basis. For this reason they cannot afford to provide bad customer service, if they do their customers can give one months notice and move onto an ISP that will provide them with the service they expect. The older ISP's have been shaken up in a big way by these newcomers. By working with old pricing models, tying customers into long contracts, not investing in staff to provide good customer service, the old ISP's have opened a huge gap for the new ISP's to capitalize on and now they have to play catchup as they watch their customer database decline.

At the end of day I would not fret too much about old ISP's maintaining an old way of thinking as they are only shooting themselves in the foot and probably won't be around to tell the story in a few years, if anything, we should feel pity for them.
 
Wow sorry for your exprience, I will never use them. Please save those hellopeter pages incase it ever gets deleted.
 
@kingmilo,

I humbly dissagree with you:

the customer is not always right

The customer IS KING.
In IT for example: A client wants something done. If it's something new you go do a lil research. If you know about it already you have the info.

If they want something done that is not available with current tech then you need to explain why that is not possible & if there is something available that closely meets their needs then you offer the customer that.

Personally: no one swears at me. Here's an example.
A customer(person) comes is she has a faulty part. She wants it exchanged there & then. I (seeing the thing & paperwork in her hand) ''I am unfortunately unable to assist you''. The lady lets lose with swear words that would make a sailor blush for almost 30min while I can't get in ''yes or no'' nevermind explain why.

When she had finally run out of steam I could explain to her that the item her husband had bought is firstly not a product we sell coz we know they have problems & 2ndly the invoice in her hand was from a store about 2km away.
I then said she is welcome to return for future purchases/assistance if she leaves her sailor ways at home.

Guess what? 3 years & she's still a client along with many of her friends she has refered to us. :)
 
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