Extremely comprehensive answer, appreciate it. Yup, any way you look at it, I am definitely over-paying. Will downgrade to a better suited product.
I'm glad my learnings can help others. Nowadays many of us are just too busy to read the fine print. We see something like uncapped and say that sounds awesome, no more getting cut off, or being overcharged like we are with most of the Mobile Data Service provides when they charge ridiculous rates when we go out of bundle. But what most people don't realise that we sign up with companies like MWEB what we are really signing up for.
I'm targeting MWEB here because I gave them an opportunity to respond privately to an email I sent to their Billing queries email account with most of the information I've detailed above. Their response to the concerns raised in my email to them, to quote, was as follows:
Good day
Thank you for your reply.
Kindly be advised that you have always been on the R539.00 per month subscription. Its just that we upgraded all members to 6MB at R539.00 per month as per the notification sent October 2016.
I then phoned them to which again they responded with statements such as your contract with us has never changed which equates to "because as long as you have been paying the same amount since day 1, your contract with us hasn't changed". The fact that their initial advertising lead customers to believe that they would also never throttle users was their legal loophole to subsequently change the T&C's and UAP as, how and whenever they saw fit, and this has now become a perfectly acceptable practice to them. The fact that they won a lawsuit against them in this regard has enabled them to take this to even further extremes.
Let's say you have heard about MWEB before, and the great deals you may have heard or read about or seen through their advertising campaigns. So you go to their website to find out more. On their website they promote their most popular packages, and broadly these currently include Fibre, Uncapped ADSL, Capped ADSL. Typically they have packages around these offerings that are either offered with "No Contract" (aka month-to-month) or with a "Contract". Their contracts typically range from 12-24 months, include a free router, free installation etc. You can also choose whether you want them to manage (and charge you for) the "ADSL or Fibre Line" or pay Telkom directly yourself.
Let me give credit where credit is due. I like their website. It's clean, uncluttered, visually appealing, professional looking, mobile friendly, exactly what I would expect from an organization I'd be interested in doing business with. I cannot and certainly do not have any gripes about MWEB's website per se.
The concerns I have raised relate to the manner in which information is disclosed (or not disclosed as the case may be), typically in the fine print - i.e. when you delve into the detail and try and understand what you really signing up for. So again, this is easiest to illustrate by walking through an example.
Existing Customer Scenario
Ok so let's go back to my personal experience. I am existing customer of MWEB's for 5+ years. I have been paying exactly the same R539 month-to-month subscription for the 4Mbps uncapped ADSL package I originally signed up for. Eventually I realized that I could either by paying a lot less based on my usage patterns, or alternatively I could still be paying more or less the same and opt for one of their higher speed uncapped ADSL offerings.
So I go to MWEB's website, click on the "
UNCAPPED ADSL" link on the top menu. I already have a router, so I select the option "
NO CONTRACT", and I am then presented with a whole bunch of offerings where the monthly package prices are lower than the R539 per month I am currently paying. Since I'm used to paying around R500 per month, their
20Mbps package at
R499 looks very appealing to me when compared to what I have now, and I notice their catch byline "
For high traffic homes or small businesses who want speed without a monthly data limit to download, stream HD or game online.". Sounds great, so I click "
ORDER NOW".
This is where people typically start overlooking the fine print, because by now you are wrapped up in the moment, excited because you reached that point where you've likely made up your mind, and most people by then only see what they want to see. So let me call out what you "should" be seeing and questioning:
1. "
This promotion is available for new customers only."
Hmmmm - I am an existing customer. What now? Why does this not apply to existing customers? In fact now I start wondering why is it that the package I am currently on now isn't even listed on the website anymore?
2. "
ADSL Terms and Conditions"
Ok, so who sells anything these days without T&Cs? That's ok, right?
But ok, let's look at the detail in the T’s & C’s. It looks like typical legal jargon. You the customer need to pay us. In the event of a dispute, you may approach ICASA (but we have great lawyers so good luck with that). Blah, blah.
Then their is their
MWEB Acceptable Use Policy. This is where any potential new AND existing customers should
really read, and if you do, you will begin to understand just how misleading and deceptive MWEB are and can be, at their discretion.
To quote:
By using any of MWEB’s services, Customers agree to comply with this AUP and to remain responsible for its users, where applicable. MWEB reserves the right to change or modify the terms of the AUP at any time, by posting an updated version on its Website at
http://www.mweb.co.za/legalpolicies/. Customer's use of MWEB’s services after changes to the AUP are posted shall constitute acceptance of any changed or additional terms.
Let me give you the run down of what you really signing up for, whether that be on long-term contract, or simply a month-to-month package, or a so-called
Premium package, or a standard package. When you sign any contract with MWEB you are agreeing and accepting the conditions of their T's & C's as well the AUP, which incorporates a clause with regards to their Fair Use Policy (FUP). The FUP entitles MWEB to throttle you whenever they want to, entirely at their discretion. The point (volume of data) at which you are throttled is not disclosed anywhere on the Legal Policies section of their website. If fact if you are a new customer you are never informed what the limits are, how exactly you will be throttled, for how long, because it is entirely at their discretion. Even if you were able to locate this information on their website, and then made a decision based on that to sign a 24 month contract with them, they could legally reduce those caps to say 10 times lower than what they were when you signed up with them, and there is
nothing you can do about it.
This is exactly the sales practice MWEB adopted in 2010 when they announced the first uncapped ADSL offerings in South Africa, and advertised it along the lines of "we will never cap your usage, EVER". A couple of years later when their network got saturated with all the users they had signed up on the promotion, they then imposed rolling 30 day monthly caps, and began throttling users that exceeded those caps. A couple of dissatisfied customers took MWEB to court about this, however MWEB won the case on the grounds that they never capped their users, they simply throttled them.
Why is this relevant today you may ask? Well think about the rollout of Fibre across the country. Right now Fibre is offered in limited areas, so all the ISPs want to get as many of this new customer base as they possibly can, because once you are a customer, you are either contractually bound for 2 years, or changing ISPs is just too much admin in a world where people have become complacent and don't have the time to argue on a case they are probably never going to win. And that is exactly where MWEB have taken advantage of customers such as myself by overcharging them for years because the standard debit order just goes off every month, and when eventually you realize how you have been treated, you contact their support and billing departments, and they have heard it all before and know exactly what to say in order to absolve themselves of all liability and make you out to be the villain, and that really it's your responsibility to continuously check their website and see whether there is perhaps a better package suited to you needs.
@MWEBHelp, I again challenge you - if you truly have the best intentions for your customers, why don't do the following:
1. When you send out you monthly invoices and statements, include the usage stats for the past year for that customer in the email in relation to their caps / thresholds
2. Clearly disclose what the volume and throttle thresholds for all your packages are at any given time on your Legal Notices section on your website
3. If customers (especially those on month-to-month contracts) could clearly benefit either by opting for a faster connection or by switching to a cheaper package, proactively send those customer emails to them informing them accordingly. Any customer that received emails like that from any service provider would become extremely loyal customers.
Or of course you can continue to proclaim that MWEB always have the best intentions for your customers, and existing and potentially new customers can read threads like this one and decide for themselves, and slowly but surely smaller start-up companies such as
Nepic will be most wiling to sign-up dissatisfied customers such as myself and never come back once they experience what true customer service is.
