Screamer

B

beuges

Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2004
Messages
26
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1
Location
South Africa.
Enticed by Screamer's pricing, I thought I might sign up and give it a shot. So I did the online sign-up on Monday, and was presented with an authorization form to sign and fax. Not having a printer handy at the time, and being incredibly lazy, I never got around to printing, signing or faxing the authorization form.

So, by the time I got home, I had already figured that cancelling my 5gb afrihost to switch over to a 5gb screamer was probably more trouble than it was worth and wasn't going to bother sending in the authorization. Nevertheless, Screamer presented me with an invoice on Monday, which I assumed was some sort of automated thing and didn't pay too much attention to it. Imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning to an SMS from FNB telling me my account had been debited for R115 despite not having sent through the authorization form that Screamer claimed they required in order to debit my account. Since I had never bothered trying to connect with the access details, I figured I might be able to cancel this account, so I sent them this email:

Hi Debbie

I completed the online application but didn't actually sign and fax the
application form so I'm surprised that the debit order actually went through
last night.
Can you let me know if this was correct procedure, and if not, can you
please arrange to refund the debit order and cancel my subscription? You
should be able to confirm that I haven't attempted to login to the system or
use any data.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Now, don't get me wrong, I agree that I did complete the online application, and accepted the T&C's, so I wasn't going to be entirely fussed about it if they didn't refund the money. At the worst, I'd have a bunch of extra bandwidth to play around with.

So I receive this reply:

Good day,

By agreeing to the terms and conditions you authorise Screamer to deduct from your bank account. Please unpay the debit order at your bank.

If you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best regards
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Fair enough, I've authorised Screamer to debit my account via my online submission. However, this response doesn't make any sense. What exactly does unpay mean? Is Screamer telling me to get my bank to reverse the transaction? Are they telling me to block their debit orders? Wouldn't it be simpler to just stop billing me on their system, rather than incur the hassle of blocked debit orders?

So anyways, I contacted the bank to find out how to block a debit order, but in the mean time, I figured that since I've paid for the service for this month, I might as well make use of it. So I created a connection to Screamer on my laptop and logged on, and decided to start making use of the bandwith at my disposal by downloading Office 2010 beta off technet... who knows, if it was fast enough, I might be tempted to stick with them after all.

screamer.png


I have a 4mb/s line (which only synchs at 2mb/s, but anyways, its definitely capable of doing better than 3kb/s.

So, overall, there has been nothing enjoyable about my screamer experience. I've emailed them and asked them to terminate my account at the end of the current billing cycle. Let's hope they at least get that right and don't cut me off immediately.
 
I was about to signup with them as my Afrihost bandwidth is almost finished.
I think after seeing all these complaints I'd rather just topup with Afrihost as the service is very good.

Thanks for the feedback ( and hard luck on the R115 you lost out on )
 
Did you ever get clarification about what "unpay" means. It was probably just a typo or something.

Screamer has disappointed me. I really expected better :(
 
I've just asked what 'unpay' means... should hopefully have an answer by tomorrow. I wouldn't mind spending the extra R115 if there was actually a chance of being able to use up an extra 5gb this month, but at these speeds it's literally impossible.
 
i used them for about 2 months in the beginning of the year, after the 6th atempt the installation guys finally got me up and running. i cancelled their services in march when the speed was 512kbps instead of the 1mbps promised. and also they debited my account for R400 or whatever last month, might have been doing it all along untill now. contacted them last week, they havent called me back yet. will seriously consider legal action against them, they just keep deducting and hope u dont notice or cant be botherd to do anything about it.
 
Interesting, I had a similar thing with Screamer.

On the form, I specified that I wanted to do EFT, but I also filled in my bank details because the form was really unclear.

They sent me an invoice for the installation, so I paid that and all was fine. So then I got an invoice for a further install charge that I really wasn't aware of, as well as the first month. So I paid that too via EFT. Then suddenly I got debited for the same amount almost a week later. So I was like "wtf". The invoice never gave any indication of the payment method or what I was supposed to do.

I told them I specified EFT, and requested they refund me by the end of the week. I got the most snotty response ever:

Your contract states clearly that a debit order should run on your account on the 1st of every month. This information gets loaded onto a program Netcash and is system generated. We need to authorize these payments days in advance on the system to be able to run on a specific date. Unfortunately your payments were only received through the system after authorization took place.

If you do not want the debit order to run, you need to inform us via email or fax to cancel this debit order on your account.
Click to expand...

This is where the Screamer trend of "the customer is always wrong" became very clear...
 
I'm going to give them till next week to sort out all their problems then will maybe consider signing up if things work out well
 
Super78 said:
I'm going to give them till next week to sort out all their problems then will maybe consider signing up if things work out well
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Dude the ping to UK in COD4 is 1025ms Ive never seen something like this before. I used Giganews for 1 hour with 15 conections. I downloaded 35mb in total with a 4mb line. Its unexceptable and a disgrace! Trust me I would rather pay the extra R30 for 5GB with afrihost since you can actually download and do gaming on it! :sick:
 
bekdik said:
maybe screaming is what the client does after signing up?
Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing. I scream when I saw the speeds I'm getting! Cause I was pulling out my hair!
 
cavedog said:
I was thinking the same thing. I scream when I saw the speeds I'm getting! Cause I was pulling out my hair!
Click to expand...

I Feel sorry for you
Do you still have your afrihost account?

I think afrihost should consider uncapped packages
 
beuges said:
I've just asked what 'unpay' means... should hopefully have an answer by tomorrow. I wouldn't mind spending the extra R115 if there was actually a chance of being able to use up an extra 5gb this month, but at these speeds it's literally impossible.
Click to expand...

Never allow company's to access your account by debit order... I learned that the hard way... The accountholder can't just stop the debit order since you gave consent to the 3rd party. I would rather pay 2 months in advance than having my debit order cancelled 3 months after my contract has been stopped because they are money loving idiots...
 
Logic! said:
Never allow company's to access your account by debit order... I learned that the hard way... The accountholder can't just stop the debit order since you gave consent to the 3rd party. I would rather pay 2 months in advance than having my debit order cancelled 3 months after my contract has been stopped because they are money loving idiots...
Click to expand...

+1
 
Almost...

Wow, talk about dodging a bullet! Read your posts just in time! :) Will be staying with cybersmart!
 
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