OpenWeb and their craziest e-mail to customers yet

A

aquarat

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I got an e-mail last night from Keoma Wright, CEO of OpenWeb, sent to all OpenWeb subscribers. It's included here (minus the signature, glimmer of hope and "Hi Friends" line).

I've highlighted some of the stuff I found interesting :

Today we have received alot of emails from many angry folks regarding the Seacom international outage. We understand. Everyone is frustrated.
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The first line is a great way to start an e-mail to your customers. Make it seem like you're one of them and throw in a some grammar and spelling mistakes while you're at it because hey, our customers won't notice because they can't speak English anyway.

Seacom should be held accountable for this. I am of the view that a carrier that do not have appropriate redundancy on their network should not be allowed to sell a so called 'first class service'.

*Rant Over*.
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"Seacom should be held accountable" ... um... cables break. Sure, Seacom has seen an exceptionally large number of breaks, but it has also brought cheap bandwidth to South Africa. I argue that cheap bandwidth is cheap for a reason - in this case because it carries higher risk of failure. ISPs buy data from Seacom (?)... so no data, no charge, therefore ISPs should be able to pass the saving on to their customers, unless of course, they're buying SAT3 data. ISPs need to offer services that have redundancy and services that don't have redundancy... it's like buying insurance. Even with redundancy, premium uncapped services in ZA are an eighth of the price they used to be. I know, I pay an eighth of what I used to and I still have decent international (in fact, I can't tell there's an issue on Seacom).

As for "not allowed to sell a first class service"... they can sell whatever they want to sell, you're the :D for reselling the service and reselling it as "a good experience.". (those words are from your site by the way).

It gets better...
Backup links were depoloyed, however, as Murphy and his law has it, they too failed.
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A spelling or grammar mistake here and there on a forum is fine... but this is the CEO of an ISP... :P Seriously ? depoloyed ? Even the spell checker in my browser for this post is screaming at me about the spelling of that word.

Engineers are attending to the fault.
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One would hope so :P .

Internet in South Africa is worse off today with these cheap uncapped packages than they ever were before! At least in the past we had decent internet that hardly went down.
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?!?! But you're the one who's offering those "cheap" services. You are not an end user, you are an ISP! You chose to switch to SEACOM and your customers followed. I would far rather have cheap but unreliable internet any day over Telkom's expensive 3GB cap. You're the one that hasn't adequately prepared.

Telkom should also wake up and drop the price of their IPConnect, as they more than any other company are to blame for this. If their IPConnect did not cost so much, First Tier ISP's would have more money to invest in redundancy measures.
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Now you're playing really ugly. Telkom isn't the best company on the block... but your woes have nothing to do with poor ol' Telkom. Are you calling yourself a First Tier ISP ? Are you blaming your lack of backups on Telkom ?

*Second Rant Over*
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Whew.

I think that's probably been the most ridiculous communication I have ever received from any South African business.

Am I wrong ?

P.S. Bold text is great :) .
 
Last edited:
Who cares if he made some spelling mistakes, he is pissed off - just like you and me, and this proves he is not a robot.
He's trying to identify with his people / customer base (on their level)
And yes, by that I mean that most of the internet users in South Africa are currently moaning like little bitches about pretty much an act of God

Grow some balls, and go play outside for a bit if you can't download the internets.

By reading that you probably thought 'yeah,but what about my business'.
Listen, if you where worth your salt you would have had redundancies built into your solution in the first place - prevention is better than cure, and we know this happened before - so learn from past mistakes.
O.K ?
ktxbye
 
Not very professional. He takes a lot upon himself in sorting out issues directly, this one how ever was a no no!
 
thanks for making this post, i wanted to make a similar one then got lazy
i think those emails are very unprofessional and i am not buying an internet account from seacom... i buy it from openweb (i understand the situation and why its out) but as the end user i shouldnt even be aware of whats going on behind the scenes
 
I don't feel my email is unprofessional at all! Folks in this country are politely apoligizing for something that is not their fault. The folks that are causing the problems should be held accountable for it.

*Third Rant Over*.
 
Anthropoid said:
Who cares if he made some spelling mistakes, he is pissed off - just like you and me, and this proves he is not a robot.
He's trying to identify with his people / customer base (on their level)
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I don't care whether he is pissed off or not. I don't give a damn about his emotional state, only mine!
He should tell the people why his service does not work, why no redundancy plan was in place, what he is doing now to fix the problem and what he will do to prevent such a thing in future.
To berate the companies who provide a service to him is bad form. He probably had his secretary writing this letter from memory after he vented to her.
 
Aquarat, with your productive 13 posts, thank you so much for taking the time to pick through every part of my email! You may now run off and report back to your boss that you were a good boy. I am so glad you can spell!

Last night it was NOT about spelling mistakes, it was about getting the message out. I am extremely angry at the situation, and I have shared this with out clients. If I have offended anyone, I am so sorry for speaking my mind.

aquarat said:
I got an e-mail last night from Keoma Wright, CEO of OpenWeb, sent to all OpenWeb subscribers. It's included here (minus the signature, glimmer of hope and "Hi Friends" line).

I've highlighted some of the stuff I found interesting :


The first line is a great way to start an e-mail to your customers. Make it seem like you're one of them and throw in a some grammar and spelling mistakes while you're at it because hey, our customers won't notice because they can't speak English anyway.


"Seacom should be held accountable" ... um... cables break. Sure, Seacom has seen an exceptionally large number of breaks, but it has also brought cheap bandwidth to South Africa. I argue that cheap bandwidth is cheap for a reason - in this case because it carries higher risk of failure. ISPs buy data from Seacom (?)... so no data, no charge, therefore ISPs should be able to pass the saving on to their customers, unless of course, they're buying SAT3 data. ISPs need to offer services that have redundancy and services that don't have redundancy... it's like buying insurance. Even with redundancy, premium uncapped services in ZA are an eighth of the price they used to be. I know, I pay an eighth of what I used to and I still have decent international (in fact, I can't tell there's an issue on Seacom).

As for "not allowed to sell a first class service"... they can sell whatever they want to sell, you're the :D for reselling the service and reselling it as "a good experience.". (those words are from your site by the way).

It gets better...

A spelling or grammar mistake here and there on a forum is fine... but this is the CEO of an ISP... :P Seriously ? depoloyed ? Even the spell checker in my browser for this post is screaming at me about the spelling of that word.


One would hope so :P .


?!?! But you're the one who's offering those "cheap" services. You are not an end user, you are an ISP! You chose to switch to SEACOM and your customers followed. I would far rather have cheap but unreliable internet any day over Telkom's expensive 3GB cap. You're the one that hasn't adequately prepared.


Now you're playing really ugly. Telkom isn't the best company on the block... but your woes have nothing to do with poor ol' Telkom. Are you calling yourself a First Tier ISP ? Are you blaming your lack of backups on Telkom ?


Whew.

I think that's probably been the most ridiculous communication I have ever received from any South African business.

Am I wrong ?

P.S. Bold text is great :) .
Click to expand...
 
The rant email was followed directly by an update email. We are all entitled to our opinions. The email was NOT sent to our Network Notice list, it was sent to our Mailing List, which also makes room for the style it was written in.

markings said:
I don't care whether he is pissed off or not. I don't give a damn about his emotional state, only mine!
He should tell the people why his service does not work, why no redundancy plan was in place, what he is doing now to fix the problem and what he will do to prevent such a thing in future.
To berate the companies who provide a service to him is bad form. He probably had his secretary writing this letter from memory after he vented to her.
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In hindsight the ISP's who used SEACOM should already have looked at redundancy measures after the first SEACOM failure... If they had, then they would not be in this sticky situation.

But they didn't, and opted to ignore the warning signs...
 
I laughed so hard when I saw this email this morning! I agree with Mrbeeps.

Some people really have nothing better to do with their lives (eg. OP)
 
MrBEEP said:
I don't feel my email is unprofessional at all! Folks in this country are politely apoligizing for something that is not their fault. The folks that are causing the problems should be held accountable for it.

*Third Rant Over*.
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Grammar and spelling notwithstanding, and not even being an OpwenWeb customer, I say good on you! You have a right to your opinion and respect that you have the guts to put it in writing.
 
Aquarat, GO SOMEPLACE ELSE withyour childish comments. Openweb has always been a top notch ISP and im glad Mr BEEP said his piece, now run along and take your high school teacher mentality with you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hope i didnt make any speling mistakes in mypost
 
hi there MrBEEP.

I'm with you on this one. I don't use OpenWeb, Never even looked at your pricing.
But after this mail, grammar and spelling aside (btw who cares, I've sent crappier mails than this before, although work-related mails I double check when I have the time and its not a crisis), good on you.

I don't know the ins and outs of the current SEACOM issue, and maybe something like this could not have been avoided, but when you're linking two continents, you should have some backups in place which are regularly tested and maintained in my opinion.

And if a CEO can attend and communicate directly with his companies clients, I likey.
 
Mantis said:
hi there MrBEEP.

I'm with you on this one. I don't use OpenWeb, Never even looked at your pricing.
But after this mail, grammar and spelling aside (btw who cares, I've sent crappier mails than this before, although work-related mails I double check when I have the time and its not a crisis), good on you.

I don't know the ins and outs of the current SEACOM issue, and maybe something like this could not have been avoided, but when you're linking two continents, you should have some backups in place which are regularly tested and maintained in my opinion.

And if a CEO can attend and communicate directly with his companies clients, I likey.
Click to expand...

+1..

aquarat - how far has your spelling and grammar got you in life?
 
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