Poor Service Delivery from Afrihost

[AfriMan]

cant understand why people dont just PM afriman instead of cancelling and ranting, he usually sorts everything out in no time.
if no satisfaction then by all means rant but at least give afriman the chance to rectify the problem first.

right, can i get a rage ticket now afriman ? i'm too slow on those facebook question plus i'm blocked here at work

I don't even have one. Wish I did though, apparently they have the Xbox One on display? Wonder if there's a PS4 as well. I've already spent my salary between now and December on pre-orders. Food donations are welcome

P.S Thanks for the awesome kudos and support. You are awesome

 

[AfriMan]

I've paused my downloads so the network should return to normal soon

Thank you for doing so. Now please post your GPS co-ordinates, there are some people who would like to have a chat

 

[wingnut771]

I'm very sad to read this. While we do regret the shaping on the network, it sounds like this issue was compacted by some poor experience with our client service. Our network is operational, in that there is nothing "broken". We are shaping more than we'd like, but the system is working as it's designed to - we do advertise Uncapped as a semi-shaped service and we do advise in our AUP exactly how we shape and match the demand for bandwidth with our network capacity.

We do provide each Uncapped client with free Turbocharge sessions to be unshaped when they need it, and we dynamically unshaped clients as soon as we see reductions in demand.

You've said you have already cancelled, so I do wish you the very best going forward. If there is anything further I can do to assist you, please drop me a PM

You would have far less angry customers if you said "Unfortunately shaping is harsher than normal at the moment so this is most likely why you are having issues. We are working on securing more bandwidth with MTN and Telkom to help alleviate this congestion" from the get go.

 

[Bubhesi]

perhaps my reaction was a bit overboard, but what i should have said was poor support service delivery. my issue isn't with the shaping. it's with the bad support i've received after numerous attempts at phoning their support line and logging on to their online chat support. no joy from either. by afriman's own admission, the consultant who mailed me spoke out of turn. it would not be an issue if they put a notice on their site informing everyone that they had major congestion due to capacity issues. their site says everything is working at full capacity with no issues. this is obviously misleading and when you cannot get through to anyone at technical support for days then it becomes extremely frustrating. the understanding i had of their shaping policy is that is would be applied to heavy users. i hardly think i fall into that category. therefore shaping me heavily because they have oversold their capacity to provide a service is not fair in my opinion. a courtesy mail from gian to inform their customers of the issues they were experiencing would have gone a long way to alleviate customer frustration. i was getting no better than 54Kb/s on my 4mb line. that is not a reasonable amount of bandwidth for the price i was paying for my account. i understand that shaping is applied, but that is ridiculous. would it be fair if we shaped our account payments based on their harsh shaping due to overselling of their available resources?

 

[koeksGHT]

Someone at rAge is sharing their uncapped afrihost account there

Lol, normally you would sell more bandwidth than you have but how much are you lacking?

 

[AfriMan]

You would have far less angry customers if you said "Unfortunately shaping is harsher than normal at the moment so this is most likely why you are having issues. We are working on securing more bandwidth with MTN and Telkom to help alleviate this congestion" from the get go.

The only problem is that this is not confirmed and we have no follow up information. As much as I would love to reassure a client, making a speculative statement like that could end up making the client even more frustrated tomorrow when we don't have timelines or confirmation thereafter. Issues like additional capacity are negotiated at high levels within MTN's structure and our Directors and we cannot make commitments on their behalf

 

[AfriMan]

perhaps my reaction was a bit overboard, but what i should have said was poor support service delivery. my issue isn't with the shaping. it's with the bad support i've received after numerous attempts at phoning their support line and logging on to their online chat support. no joy from either. by afriman's own admission, the consultant who mailed me spoke out of turn. it would not be an issue if they put a notice on their site informing everyone that they had major congestion due to capacity issues. their site says everything is working at full capacity with no issues. this is obviously misleading and when you cannot get through to anyone at technical support for days then it becomes extremely frustrating. the understanding i had of their shaping policy is that is would be applied to heavy users. i hardly think i fall into that category. therefore shaping me heavily because they have oversold their capacity to provide a service is not fair in my opinion. a courtesy mail from gian to inform their customers of the issues they were experiencing would have gone a long way to alleviate customer frustration. i was getting no better than 54Kb/s on my 4mb line. that is not a reasonable amount of bandwidth for the price i was paying for my account. i understand that shaping is applied, but that is ridiculous. would it be fair if we shaped our account payments based on their harsh shaping due to overselling of their available resources?

I understand your frustration, but I also think you may be assuming some facts which are not actually the truth.

We are confident that usage is not due to oversubscription. As an ISP with several years experience, we are accustomed to the effect a slow buildup of clients has on available capacity. I think everyone would concede that things were running fine, with minimal shaping (in most cases less than one would expect) and there was a sudden and dramatic rise in usage. Unless we signed up 10,000 subscribers on 10Mbps lines in a day, it's very unlikely that even a sudden spike in signups could cause that kind of upsurge.

As I've explained previously, the network notification is to inform clients that an aspect of our network is non-functioning or failing. We don't believe that this is the case. Our clients control usage, and thereby applied shaping, and our network management system is responding accordingly - as it is designed to. It may not be an ideal situation, but more than anything things are working as designed to deliver the best experience under the circumstances.

 

[any14]

My experience with their support has been better than any other ISP i've dealt with :/

For a while there they were but I've also noticed a serious drop in service levels. I'm on business uncapped/unshaped and it's everything but. There are times when I can't even keep a putty session going for more than a few minutes.

I'm beginning to become concerned that Afrihost have taken on more than they can handle and contention ratios are now becoming dangerously high.

 

[wingnut771]

The only problem is that this is not confirmed and we have no follow up information. As much as I would love to reassure a client, making a speculative statement like that could end up making the client even more frustrated tomorrow when we don't have timelines or confirmation thereafter. Issues like additional capacity are negotiated at high levels within MTN's structure and our Directors and we cannot make commitments on their behalf

That was a quote direct from your support channels. So, I see nothing has changed. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

 

[Defib]

Don't get me wrong Afriguy, I really like Afrihost and your products. But when I struggle to get help I get annoyed.

 

[zik]

I have a service ticket outstanding for 24 hours with no response regarding terrible netflix streaming on a 10mb uncapped account.
Only my second month .. Not very happy!

 

[HermanTheGerman]

Afrihost's support is disgusting

Compared to?

 

[Bubhesi]

Compared to?

Why does it have to be compared to anything? Poor service is poor service. Must we now recognize poor service as good service simply because it is better than the other crappy service that gets forced down out throats? When are we going to stop accepting bad quality products and poor service in South Africa? Unless we start demanding higher standards, the rest of the world will always be light years ahead of us and we will keep sucking on the hind tit.

 

[LazyLion]

Afrihost doubled my capped account for free from 72 Gigs to 144 Gigs. So no complaints here!

And I know of multiple ways (MyBB, FB, Twitter, E-mail, website, etc) to get a request for service into the queue so no worries on that side either.

 

[AfriGuy]

I have a service ticket outstanding for 24 hours with no response regarding terrible netflix streaming on a 10mb uncapped account.
Only my second month .. Not very happy!

I'm really sorry about this Have you managed to see a response from our team yet?
If not, drop me a PM and I'll get things checked out ASAP for you.

 

[droplet]

i have been struggling to get my problem sorted out since i switched to afrihost at the beginning of the month. i am not shaped. i am not downloading. but i can;t get anough throughput to stream either supersport or youtbe. these are supposedly unshaped services. they work fine on the 1GB free account, but not on my premium 10mb uncapped account.

my gripre is this: i get immediate responses from afriman, afriguy and afrigirl. but no results. what is going on? will i get refunded at the end of the month? the reason i have internet is primarily for video streaming.

 

[AfriGuy]

i have been struggling to get my problem sorted out since i switched to afrihost at the beginning of the month. i am not shaped. i am not downloading. but i can;t get anough throughput to stream either supersport or youtbe. these are supposedly unshaped services. they work fine on the 1GB free account, but not on my premium 10mb uncapped account.

my gripre is this: i get immediate responses from afriman, afriguy and afrigirl. but no results. what is going on? will i get refunded at the end of the month? the reason i have internet is primarily for video streaming.

Hi droplet

Sorry about this, I've had a run through my PM's for the last month and don't seem to have anything from you
I'd like to see as to why these services are being shaped - as they are indeed unshaped on our end. Please send through your details to me via PM and I'll make sure that we have a look at your account for you.

 

[nerf]

Why does it have to be compared to anything? Poor service is poor service. Must we now recognize poor service as good service simply because it is better than the other crappy service that gets forced down out throats? When are we going to stop accepting bad quality products and poor service in South Africa? Unless we start demanding higher standards, the rest of the world will always be light years ahead of us and we will keep sucking on the hind tit.

I think Afrihost support and service is great, compare them to Telkom or say Home Affairs is a major LOL

 

[nerf]

i have been struggling to get my problem sorted out since i switched to afrihost at the beginning of the month. i am not shaped. i am not downloading. but i can;t get anough throughput to stream either supersport or youtbe. these are supposedly unshaped services. they work fine on the 1GB free account, but not on my premium 10mb uncapped account.

my gripre is this: i get immediate responses from afriman, afriguy and afrigirl. but no results. what is going on? will i get refunded at the end of the month? the reason i have internet is primarily for video streaming.

Make sure you use afrihost DNS server, sommer put them in your PC's own IP settings - Primary 196.7.7.7 sec 196.7.8.9 - then do a "ipconfig /flushdns" in CMD

Clear your browser cache and cookies etc etc

Try youtube again

 

[wez1007]

Why does it have to be compared to anything? Poor service is poor service. Must we now recognize poor service as good service simply because it is better than the other crappy service that gets forced down out throats? When are we going to stop accepting bad quality products and poor service in South Africa? Unless we start demanding higher standards, the rest of the world will always be light years ahead of us and we will keep sucking on the hind tit.

at least we have a tit to suck on ....