My very "pleasant" experience with Afrihost

[Goatcheese]

@AfriGuy @AfriNatic

Hope this is the right sub to post in. So for about an whole year I've been having latency issues using Afrihost (ClearAccess) and I've been pleading to their WhatsApp support, no one really helped. Decided to get ExitLag to help with my packet loss when playing games like League of Legends and Fortnite. To my suprise, it worked, I didn't have latency issues at all when rerouting my internet to get to their servers. Now, let's fast forward to this week. My ExitLag subscription finally stopped on the first of May and I decided that I shouldn't be paying to have this issue sorted out. I went and made a ticket with their support. Here is where it goes downhill.

Good evening

Thank you for contacting Afrihost and for your correspondence, I hope this email finds you well.

With regard to your query. Please accept my sincere apologies for the poor connection you seem to be experiencing.

Please advise if the performance you are experiencing is with your laptop or computer connected with the cable connection to the Wi-Fi router instead of the Wi-Fi Medium. We need to test the Fibre connection segment of your Internet connection, testing through the Wi-Fi will not give us the true reflection of the Fibre performance health, this is also a requirement/prerequisite by the fibre network operators.
When you have completed the cable connection test, kindly send me the screenshots exhibiting the results.

Once again, Apologies for the inconvenience caused.

Awaiting your correspondence.
Keep well, until we chat again. Take care.
Thanks and Take Care
Thabiso
Afrihost.com
Pure Internet Joy!

True reflection of the Fiber performance health... Should be obvious since using third party software fixes my latency issues? Anyway, I send an email back, noticing that Thabiso is NOT the first person the support email was sent to in the first place. I actually sent all my ping tests, tracert, and actual in-game ping to another person before the ticket was handed over to this person.

I then replied to the email above:

Hi there,

The connection is via Ethernet to my computer, but it doesn't matter what device I use. Latency test to the server from my phone is the same as my PC, even from a laptop with Ethernet and using the WIFI. The screenshots that you are referring to, which screenshots do you want? The ones I sent through to you were all using a Ethernet connection. The same goes with the tracert test that was requested. Please let me know.

Kind regards.

Followed up by this:

Hi there,

And to add to this, the fact that I use a VPN that reroutes my connection to play games without the latency issues, that actually fixes my problem should tell you that there is a routing issue with Clear Access. As per my previous emails, I have footage of me playing with and without ExitLag, meaning I have hard proof that when going through just Clear Access that the latency is horrendous, but when tunneling through a South African server through Europe my latency is fixed. That cannot be a router issue, a wifi issue, an ethernet issue etc. This is an ISP issue.

Kind regards.

She decides that it's a good idea to reply with:

Good evening

Thank you for your correspondence,

Connecting through a VPN sends your initial traffic connection to the VPN concentrator proxy thus changing your source connection IP address mimicking a connection sourced from Russia in your case. Traffic handling is determined by rooting policies, and routing policies depends on the respective local internet service provider and the upstream peering Provider, so if traffic gets handled better when you are seen as connecting from Russia, it does not mean that there is necessarily a fault with your local provider's routing when did you not get the same connection speed or roundtrip time. It simply means the IP address that you are seeing connecting from, belongs to a local service provider upstream with a better routing traffic policy between themselves and the destination address you ultimately connect to for gaming.

Lastly, if we had an international upstream latency issue, it would not discriminate to affecting your line only. We send off in traffic as trunked traffic, thus making it impossible to affect only one client.

Perhaps if you can find a VPN concentrator connection that's not from Russia,

Keep well, until we chat again. Take care.
Thanks and Take Care
Thabiso
Afrihost.com
Pure Internet Joy!

Not ONCE did I mention Russia... Not once did I tell them that my routing was done through a Russian VPN. League of Legends servers are located in Europe, Amsterdam. I told her that my connection is routed through Europe. This has made me finally decide against Afrihost and I'm already in the midst of moving ISP's.

Salt into the wound, this is one of 2 support tickets in progress. The other one was after I phoned them yesterday, the guy sent me an email, I replied and he never replied.

This morning I woke up and finally received a SMS that there is, in fact, a problem with Clear Access. My question now is, why? Why are you guys arguing? Do you think I have a sub-par IQ and that I'll just eat up everything you say like a buffet dinner? I wasn't born yesterday, I know when my issues ARE issues. I would not have wasted my time with16 tickets in the last year alone, for my own entertainment. I have better things to do than that. So why do you guys have your people debate instead of eg. sending someone out to come check out the problem? I mean, this has been going on for the whole week just for it to be confirmed this morning? I followed up with this email:

I know the ticket is closed, but what is it now?? Is it my "Russian VPN" or not? Unbelievable.

Yesterday I was told that it's my router, now I'm told that there's an issue with Clear Access.

Because just a few hours ago I was told it's my "Russian VPN" now I'm told that there is an actual problem? lol.... I'm over this issue to be honest. 8 months ago I gave Afrihost a one star rating on Google Reviews due to the poor quality of the latency to game servers, they still think I'm crazy to this day with email responses like this.

 

[IceQB]

Maybe tag @AfriGuy @AfriNatic see if they can sort this out for you

 

[Goatcheese]

Maybe tag @AfriGuy @AfriNatic see if they can sort this out for you

Ah, good idea. Will do! Thank you.

 

[AfriNatic]

@AfriGuy @AfriNatic

Hope this is the right sub to post in. So for about an whole year I've been having latency issues using Afrihost (ClearAccess) and I've been pleading to their WhatsApp support, no one really helped. Decided to get ExitLag to help with my packet loss when playing games like League of Legends and Fortnite. To my suprise, it worked, I didn't have latency issues at all when rerouting my internet to get to their servers. Now, let's fast forward to this week. My ExitLag subscription finally stopped on the first of May and I decided that I shouldn't be paying to have this issue sorted out. I went and made a ticket with their support. Here is where it goes downhill.



True reflection of the Fiber performance health... Should be obvious since using third party software fixes my latency issues? Anyway, I send an email back, noticing that Thabiso is NOT the first person the support email was sent to in the first place. I actually sent all my ping tests, tracert, and actual in-game ping to another person before the ticket was handed over to this person.

I then replied to the email above:



Followed up by this:



She decides that it's a good idea to reply with:



Not ONCE did I mention Russia... Not once did I tell them that my routing was done through a Russian VPN. League of Legends servers are located in Europe, Amsterdam. I told her that my connection is routed through Europe. This has made me finally decide against Afrihost and I'm already in the midst of moving ISP's.

Salt into the wound, this is one of 2 support tickets in progress. The other one was after I phoned them yesterday, the guy sent me an email, I replied and he never replied.

This morning I woke up and finally received a SMS that there is, in fact, a problem with Clear Access. My question now is, why? Why are you guys arguing? Do you think I have a sub-par IQ and that I'll just eat up everything you say like a buffet dinner? I wasn't born yesterday, I know when my issues ARE issues. I would not have wasted my time with16 tickets in the last year alone, for my own entertainment. I have better things to do than that. So why do you guys have your people debate instead of eg. sending someone out to come check out the problem? I mean, this has been going on for the whole week just for it to be confirmed this morning? I followed up with this email:



Because just a few hours ago I was told it's my "Russian VPN" now I'm told that there is an actual problem? lol.... I'm over this issue to be honest. 8 months ago I gave Afrihost a one star rating on Google Reviews due to the poor quality of the latency to game servers, they still think I'm crazy to this day with email responses like this.

Hi,

Sorry for the bad experience you had with our call centre agents.

I was busy with an investigateion on the Clear Access issue and it seems they are experiencing some congestion on their NLD to Teraco. I have asked our Noc team to add the notice this morning.

We don't have an ETA from CA on when the issue will be resolved but we are pushing for ETA's.

 

[Goatcheese]

Hi,

Sorry for the bad experience you had with our call centre agents.

I was busy with an investigateion on the Clear Access issue and it seems they are experiencing some congestion on their NLD to Teraco. I have asked our Noc team to add the notice this morning.

We don't have an ETA from CA on when the issue will be resolved but we are pushing for ETA's.

@AfriNatic
Thanks for your response. It's good that they found the fault and all. My only problem now is what about any future complications? I'll be met with the exact same thing and that's a big problem to me. What if they never checked/logged and I just kept going back and forth with a support person? Weirdly enough, this was logged by the person I phoned at Afrihost yesterday. The rest however, just kept on debating instead of actually trying to find a solution to my problem. As mentioned, 8 months ago I made a 1* review on Google Reviews based off of the whole latency issue with Clear Access but everytime I get told that it's either my router etc when it's actually not. It's not like I didn't have issues for the last year, only now that they actually admitted to a fault. Packet loss is not a new thing for me. It's been happening for a very long time.

 

[AfriNatic]

@AfriNatic
Thanks for your response. It's good that they found the fault and all. My only problem now is what about any future complications? I'll be met with the exact same thing and that's a big problem to me. What if they never checked/logged and I just kept going back and forth with a support person? Weirdly enough, this was logged by the person I phoned at Afrihost yesterday. The rest however, just kept on debating instead of actually trying to find a solution to my problem. As mentioned, 8 months ago I made a 1* review on Google Reviews based off of the whole latency issue with Clear Access but everytime I get told that it's either my router etc when it's actually not. It's not like I didn't have issues for the last year, only now that they actually admitted to a fault. Packet loss is not a new thing for me. It's been happening for a very long time.

Sometimes clients feel frustrated navigating through 1st line support and I understand that but the team is trained to get through the most obvious issues first and then we can look at escalating to our Noc team to assist with network related issues.

I will have a chat to the person that assisted.

 

[Luke7777]

@AfriNatic
Thanks for your response. It's good that they found the fault and all. My only problem now is what about any future complications? I'll be met with the exact same thing and that's a big problem to me. What if they never checked/logged and I just kept going back and forth with a support person? Weirdly enough, this was logged by the person I phoned at Afrihost yesterday. The rest however, just kept on debating instead of actually trying to find a solution to my problem. As mentioned, 8 months ago I made a 1* review on Google Reviews based off of the whole latency issue with Clear Access but everytime I get told that it's either my router etc when it's actually not. It's not like I didn't have issues for the last year, only now that they actually admitted to a fault. Packet loss is not a new thing for me. It's been happening for a very long time.

@Goatcheese It's easy... Stop dealing with 1st line. Come here, speak to @AfriNatic and get it sorted. I've never in all my years with Afrihost dealt with 1st line. All was handled by the various Afri-people right here in this forum.

 

[Goatcheese]

@Goatcheese It's easy... Stop dealing with 1st line. Come here, speak to @AfriNatic and get it sorted. I've never in all my years with Afrihost dealt with 1st line. All was handled by the various Afri-people right here in this forum.

Didn't think about that up until this morning, lol. Logged in and quickly made the post. It's quite frustrating knowing that I had to argue with them for a week before someone finally escalated the issue. For me, the rerouting would have been a dead giveaway that it is not something in ones local space that is causing the issue, yet I had to debate my point and got absolutely nowhere, up until now, that is.

 

[saor]

Maybe this isn't the place and maybe this is all subjective, but there's something about that support comms that actually just riles customers up more than they already are.

1.) Profuse apology.

With regard to your query. Please accept my sincere apologies for the poor connection you seem to be experiencing.

Once again, Apologies for the inconvenience caused.

I get the intention, but really - why apologize? Just acknowledge the issue and fix it. If you feel the need to apologize then something casual like: "Sorry for the downtime you experienced" comes across as a lot more sincere than these corporate sounding (fake) "sincere apologies." Even worse so when it's two apologies in one email. Annoys me when I contact FNB and the first thing they open their email with is "Our sincerest apol.....".

2.) That peudo-happy signature.

Keep well, until we chat again. Take care.
Thanks and Take Care
Thabiso
Afrihost.com
Pure Internet Joy!

Wtf is that? Literally saying the same thing twice over.

This stuff comes across as condescending and irksome when you're trying to resolve something and are already irritated. What was initially just a technical irritation (slow internet etc.) now also becomes a personal irritation & people start losing their patience at twice the speed.

/random rant

 

[Goatcheese]

Maybe this isn't the place and maybe this is all subjective, but there's something about that support comms that actually just riles customers up more than they already are.

1.) Profuse apology.

I get the intention, but really - why apologize? Just acknowledge the issue and fix it. If you feel the need to apologize then something casual like: "Sorry for the downtime you experienced" comes across as a lot more sincere than these corporate sounding (fake) "sincere apologies." Even worse so when it's two apologies in one email. Annoys me when I contact FNB and the first thing they open their email with is "Our sincerest apol.....".

2.) That peudo-happy signature.

Wtf is that? Literally saying the same thing twice over.

This stuff comes across as condescending and irksome when you're trying to resolve something and are already irritated. What was initially just a technical irritation (slow internet etc.) now also becomes a personal irritation & people start losing their patience at twice the speed.

/random rant

I definitely agree with all those points. Funny thing is, a few months ago I went through to their fiber department regarding constant drops in my internet, as it is now and the person told me to do a speedtest when my internet goes off.. I kid you not. That made me FUME. It's actually a casual joke my friend group makes now, most of them coming from Afrihost ADSL, they loved Afrihost, but they won't return. I manage to get one other person to go with them, but it is what it is. I've learned my lesson, but I'll have to stick with them for now unfortunately.

 

[ubercal]

Sometimes clients feel frustrated navigating through 1st line support and I understand that but the team is trained to get through the most obvious issues first and then we can look at escalating to our Noc team to assist with network related issues.

I will have a chat to the person that assisted.

or maybe hire junior IT people at level 1 so issues get resolved quickly so they dont have to be "trained" to read a script ?