Openweb - Be Cautious.

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It is apparent to me that MrBEEP is breaching his own goal of always putting the customer first. MrBEEP has instead placed his suppliers Terms first.

Of course, this has very little effect on the entire situation. However, I find myself drawn towards not recommending a company that cannot be contacted directly by a customer in times of need.

I also find that thriel failed to mention certain facts, like the fact that Openweb had made a discounted offer to him this morning. Thriel has conducted what is in effect a smear campaign against Openweb, omitting details.

This whole thing is just not on par, but I find myself a little more educated, and sadly so, in the tactics of less than honourable actions.

I agree with most of this. The service can be criticized and if people choose to go another route then so be it. But that should not have anything to do with not being refunded for a service which was duly rendered.

The highlighted parts are particularly worrying. Hence my constant posting in here.
 
Perhaps pertaining to the poor service but not pertaining to the way they billed you, or that they did bill you the full amount. There are two different issues here.

to you its two different issues because you think like a laywer. to me its one and the same company that i have to deal with everytime i have issues should i have chosen to continue my service with them

And dave, they made that offer this afternoon, not early this morning. I didnt mention it because i was too disgusted with it, i had already signed up with axxess and really could not care how much discount openweb offered me at this stage, the damage is done.

This thread was purely made to vent my frustration and to make other users weary of the poor service they will recieve from this company among other things.

Openweb could have handled this in any one of a thousand ways, instead they chose to treat me like a criminal, or atleast made me feel like it.

I still have recieved no apology.
 
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Sorry, but am I missing something:

"We paid the full sum of R1299 on the 27th of June 2009, 3 days before month end. However, they sent me an email stating that they work on a calendar month and not 30 days, therefore they require us to Pay another R1299 for July's access, and that the R1299 we paid was for 3 days access of June 2009."

"4.13 Payment of your account is due on the 27th of each month, paid in advance for the following months access. Accounts purchased within a month, will only last until the end of the month it was purchased in."

According to their T&C's this should have been for the month of July, not?

He paid in full on the 27th?
 
<snip>And dave, they made that offer this afternoon, not early this morning. I didnt mention it because i was too disgusted with it, i had already signed up with axxess and really could not care how much discount openweb offered me at this stage, the damage is done.<snip>
I apologise. I have corrected my post.
 
Sorry, but am I missing something:

"We paid the full sum of R1299 on the 27th of June 2009, 3 days before month end. However, they sent me an email stating that they work on a calendar month and not 30 days, therefore they require us to Pay another R1299 for July's access, and that the R1299 we paid was for 3 days access of June 2009."

"4.13 Payment of your account is due on the 27th of each month, paid in advance for the following months access. Accounts purchased within a month, will only last until the end of the month it was purchased in."

According to their T&C's this should have been for the month of July, not?

He paid in full on the 27th?
Yes, but by the same logic, the client should not have used the product for the 3 days before the end of the month.
 
to you its two different issues because you think like a laywer. to me its one and the same company that i have to deal with everytime i have issues should i have chosen to continue my service with them

And dave, they made that offer this afternoon, not early this morning. I didnt mention it because i was too disgusted with it, i had already signed up with axxess and really could not care how much discount openweb offered me at this stage, the damage is done.

This thread was purely made to vent my frustration and to make other users weary of the poor service they will recieve from this company among other things.

Openweb could have handled this in any one of a thousand ways, instead they chose to treat me like a criminal, or atleast made me feel like it.

I still have recieved no apology.

I might think like a lawyer, but it is the sensible thing to do here.

Complain about their poor service and I would support you, don't complain about a mistake that you made about billing.
 
thriel, if you were my customer I would have told you to get lost by now. It is not my business to babysit you. You signed up for a product that you knew nothing about with a company that you did no homework on and knew nothing about the way they work. You then failed to monitor the account and your obligations to them at the month end, having received correspondence from the company that a billing cycle was in progress. You then proceeded to continue using the account for a further three days before you got cut off for non-payment (and I haven't seen you offer to pay anything for those three days either). So basically you got six days of unlimited usage for R1299.00. You still haven't told us how much you actually used (and that by itself says a lot). I would cut my losses with you and refuse to do any further business with you. But you then went and signed up with another company Axxess, which has nearly identical terms of service and yet now you seem to understand how things work (did you learn something about how companies work in the last two weeks?)

There was no obligation on the company to inform you of the specific details of the terms of service, it would have been nice, but no obligation. You called them up, said I want "X" product now, here's my payment. They said fine... here is "X" Product. Sale completed. The fact that you were ignorant of how their product works is not their problem. YOU asked for the product. This little life lesson will help you be wiser in future. Maybe one day when you are old enough to buy a car you will look over it very carefully and read the conditions of sale, instead of coming back a week later and saying "Hey, this car only has a 1.3 liter engine and I wanted a V8... and I have to buy petrol as well... WTF??" Ja... sorry... they don't tell you that at the car dealership... but cars do run on petrol.

I think Mr. Beep has gone beyond what was required in offering you a discount for the rest of the month. But surprise, surprise... you refuse the offer.

Seems to me like you are just hiding behind "customer service" and hoping to get freebies if you complain loudly enough. Sorry... nobody is buying it... well at least nobody with brains. :D
 
In 7 years of business/finance studies its the golden rule for a company " customers come 1st" .

And, as soon as you finish with the studies, and actually start dealing with these 'customers' in the real world, you'll find that every now and again you have to tell one to go fly a kite.

A business cannot function by conceding to each & every customer demand - any profit would quickly be spent on appeasing feisty clients.

I wouldn't have spent R1.3k without making damn sure exactly what I was buying. If I had, I would only have myself to blame... The support issue is separate to all this, and frankly quite concerning. But, it doesn't change the fact that a service was paid for & rendered according to existing T&Cs. If no mention was made during the telephone call, then perhaps the staff member in question has something to answer for personally.
 
Gary there are ignorant people out there, surely as an owner of a company you should ensure even the ignorant get the message though.

when i started buying 30gb local accounts, i phoned webafrica and asked them to organize me one and the lady i spoke to pointed out it was the 28th and that i would be charged this month for the 3 days usage, i said that is fine.

The point is surely regardless of the situation you should point it out. That was only 130 bucks and she pointed it out, how is it that a company that is going to charge someone 1.3k for 3 days usage cannot point it out over the phone?
 
openweb: where no one can hear you scream
axxess: we change you for the better
webafrica: bill me one more time
 
And, as soon as you finish with the studies, and actually start dealing with these 'customers' in the real world, you'll find that every now and again you have to tell one to go fly a kite.

A business cannot function by conceding to each & every customer demand - any profit would quickly be spent on appeasing feisty clients.

I wouldn't have spent R1.3k without making damn sure exactly what I was buying. If I had, I would only have myself to blame... The support issue is separate to all this, and frankly quite concerning. But, it doesn't change the fact that a service was paid for & rendered according to existing T&Cs. If no mention was made during the telephone call, then perhaps the staff member in question has something to answer for personally.

agreed altough,
Im done with studies and I think there are too many customers in this instance to go fly a kite.

one of my my problems with openweb was that they advertise a service like openbrowse 512 and it didnt perform at 512. Also the fact that downloads never worked over weekends. (which was promised)

Openweb brought a sour taste to my mouth after I had a massive struggle with their services.

I would like this unfinished "openweb service" dilemma to be continued in a new thread so that it can get the necessary attention.

I do believe it is important for customers to know what they sign up for.

I believe a few people here fight for openweb because they are trying to get a reasonable argument from the ones that complain, although they know in the back of their heads that Openweb service and support really is up to nothing.
 
Gary there are ignorant people out there, surely as an owner of a company you should ensure even the ignorant get the message though.

when i started buying 30gb local accounts, i phoned webafrica and asked them to organize me one and the lady i spoke to pointed out it was the 28th and that i would be charged this month for the 3 days usage, i said that is fine.

The point is surely regardless of the situation you should point it out. That was only 130 bucks and she pointed it out, how is it that a company that is going to charge someone 1.3k for 3 days usage cannot point it out over the phone?

Ja, I agree wholeheartedly... there are some ignorant people out there! :D In fact, there are some very ignorant people in here too ;)

Like I said above, it would have been nice if the customer agent pointed out that fact, but he is under no obligation to do so. Especially with an uncapped product which by its very nature is open to [-]abuse[/-] heavy usage.

As was pointed out also... it is easy to do 50 to 80 Gigs on that product... a value of several thousand rand... so R1300 is not unusual payment for such an option. He got more than his money's worth. His website stayed up and he had uncapped internet for 6 days. Who knows how much bandwidth he pulled... he wont' tell us.
 
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you know what I mean... by abuse I mean heavy usage. Some people term that abuse... but yes you are right, it is not technically abuse.

i find it hard to believe that you and a few others have been lecturing me all day about specifics, yet you make a statement like that ?

technicaly i dont have a point to stand on, yet technicaly its not abuse, but yet it is ??

i failed to understand.

in anyway, someone over at newshost recommended i should go see an "ombudsman" about all of this. never even heard of them, but sounds interesting, i will look into it in the morning, since he provided me with links and contact details i suppose it couldnt hurt, and he seems to think i shouldnt let openweb get away with this, he's been reading this thread as well.
 
That's just plain ripping the poor client off... Bad on OpenWeb... i'll also avoid them in the future. :mad:

+1
Openweb could have informed the client instead of tarnishing their name. Bye Bye openweb!
 
i find it hard to believe that you and a few others have been lecturing me all day about specifics, yet you make a statement like that ?

technicaly i dont have a point to stand on, yet technicaly its not abuse, but yet it is ??

i failed to understand.

in anyway, someone over at newshost recommended i should go see an "ombudsman" about all of this. never even heard of them, but sounds interesting, i will look into it in the morning, since he provided me with links and contact details i suppose it couldnt hurt, and he seems to think i shouldnt let openweb get away with this, he's been reading this thread as well.

Dude, whether you like what we have to say or not, that is not going to get you anywhere. But if you like wasting your time, then so be it.

It seems you have already caused one or two uninformed/ignorant/too lazy to read the entire thread people to leave/ not to sign up with Openweb, so you have been successful. :o
 
Thriel you were ripped off as they could have easily charged you only for the three days.
Ironically I was just looking at their site to get myself access but due to the service provided to you I am walking away!

Thriel sorry about your story and thank you for sharing it with us.
 
To the legal eagles out there. Is there not a point in law that says "Let the buyer be aware" ?

@ thiel - you are now the newest member of the BMW Brigade ..... the Bitch Moan Whine Brigade that is.
 
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