charlieharper
Expert Member
Been having an absolute nightmare of an experience on the Rain network the last 2 months.
I've been a Rain (via Afrihost) customer since August 2018. I pay R1349/m for 220gb, but combined with rollover / peak + offpeak data, I get around 600gb data to use.
For the first year and a half it's been fantastic. Speeds were constantly over 15-20mbps up and down. No complaints.
However since December it's like service quality deteriorated over night. And I'm talking seriously bad.
Out of like 14 speed tests this month, only 3 of them are over 4 mbps... And I'm not saying 4mbps is fast, I just feel 4mbps is the minimum speed I can work with without completely ruining the whole experience - and I mean, it's 4G, not a 4mbps DSL line.
(Note, upload speeds are mostly fine - issues are with the download speed)
[Mid December 2019]
I contacted Afrihost to see if they can sort it out for me. They couldn't do much and asked me to fill in a form to deal with Rain, called the Rain degradation form, with details such as my router, sim card number etc.
Nothing much happened.
I've been sending out multiple emails over the last few weeks and spoke to multiple support agents, both through Afrihost who provides me with this connection, as well as Rain directly, since I'm obviously on the Rain network. All fruitless so far.
As a techie, I always do research and want to (at least try to) solve problems myself and a forum thread (over at MyBroadband) showed if I set my LTE band frequency on the router to 2600mhz instead of the default 1800mhz it's running on speed might be more stable - but apparently our tower doesn't support 2600mhz, so back to 1800mhz. My gut feeling says, congestion and I mentioned it over email.
Eventually Afrihost said I should sign up for an MTN or Telkom sim card and sent me a link - but I think it's utterly ridiculous service that I should be going through that effort of signing up for a new service + buy a new router if going the MTN route. Such BS. I told them if anything, I came to you with a problem and if switching networks is the only thing you can do, I expect you to do that for me.
I then started dealing with Rain directly again... because, after all - I'm on the Rain network.
I started DM'ing Rain related people on Twitter and a person who I believe is a director at Rain replied with an email address of someone who's might be able to help. Using the formula of the contact person, "[email protected]", I took a lucky guess and successfully managed to CC Michael into the conversation, hoping he could get more managers involved to take a look at it and resolve it asap.
Once again I had to send them my router brand + model as well as the sim card number.
After about 5 emails I did get an email from the person I CC'd at Rain this morning saying, "Please may I ask to be dropped from these mails?". Clearly doesn't want to get involved, a bit impolite don't you think?
But anyway, the guys at Rain promised me they are on it and I will continue to stay on top of them till I get a final answer where they can restore the quality of service I used to have or not.
Will keep you updated as it happens.
Also, worth noting, I'm well over 25 emails in since December. This excludes DM's over twitter.
I've been a Rain (via Afrihost) customer since August 2018. I pay R1349/m for 220gb, but combined with rollover / peak + offpeak data, I get around 600gb data to use.
For the first year and a half it's been fantastic. Speeds were constantly over 15-20mbps up and down. No complaints.
However since December it's like service quality deteriorated over night. And I'm talking seriously bad.
Out of like 14 speed tests this month, only 3 of them are over 4 mbps... And I'm not saying 4mbps is fast, I just feel 4mbps is the minimum speed I can work with without completely ruining the whole experience - and I mean, it's 4G, not a 4mbps DSL line.
(Note, upload speeds are mostly fine - issues are with the download speed)
[Mid December 2019]
I contacted Afrihost to see if they can sort it out for me. They couldn't do much and asked me to fill in a form to deal with Rain, called the Rain degradation form, with details such as my router, sim card number etc.
Nothing much happened.
I've been sending out multiple emails over the last few weeks and spoke to multiple support agents, both through Afrihost who provides me with this connection, as well as Rain directly, since I'm obviously on the Rain network. All fruitless so far.
As a techie, I always do research and want to (at least try to) solve problems myself and a forum thread (over at MyBroadband) showed if I set my LTE band frequency on the router to 2600mhz instead of the default 1800mhz it's running on speed might be more stable - but apparently our tower doesn't support 2600mhz, so back to 1800mhz. My gut feeling says, congestion and I mentioned it over email.
Eventually Afrihost said I should sign up for an MTN or Telkom sim card and sent me a link - but I think it's utterly ridiculous service that I should be going through that effort of signing up for a new service + buy a new router if going the MTN route. Such BS. I told them if anything, I came to you with a problem and if switching networks is the only thing you can do, I expect you to do that for me.
I then started dealing with Rain directly again... because, after all - I'm on the Rain network.
I started DM'ing Rain related people on Twitter and a person who I believe is a director at Rain replied with an email address of someone who's might be able to help. Using the formula of the contact person, "[email protected]", I took a lucky guess and successfully managed to CC Michael into the conversation, hoping he could get more managers involved to take a look at it and resolve it asap.
Once again I had to send them my router brand + model as well as the sim card number.
After about 5 emails I did get an email from the person I CC'd at Rain this morning saying, "Please may I ask to be dropped from these mails?". Clearly doesn't want to get involved, a bit impolite don't you think?
But anyway, the guys at Rain promised me they are on it and I will continue to stay on top of them till I get a final answer where they can restore the quality of service I used to have or not.
Will keep you updated as it happens.
Also, worth noting, I'm well over 25 emails in since December. This excludes DM's over twitter.
Last edited:
