Telkom and Openweb.

[thriel]

I am at my ropes end here.

I run a game server : http://www.roseza.co.za

We are one week from launch and our net goes down, its been down for hours. The forum, homepage and patch server runs off a 4mb connection which is sufficient for the job it has to do. however, this is a critical time for us, thousands of potential players have their eyes on us, all waiting to see if we will make or break, most of them very critical and ready to turn the smallest problem into the biggest. to put it simply i cannot afford the line to go down, and most definitely not for an extended period of time. it looks and comes accross as very unprofessional.

Our connection is down, i called telkom ( took me over and hour waiting to be served ) who assured me that it is not their fault, they said i must call isp.


But has anyone tried to get through to openweb ? the phone is forever engaged, and this is second time i have this problem with them. i understand that they have many users, but for godsake put more phones in then. many users is an excuse, not a solution. iv'e been trying since shortly after 11 AM, its now 2PM and i have had no luck.


now i am not saying its openwebs fault my connection is down, but i cannot get through to them to establish if the problem is on their side. i already know telkom is useless and i suspect it is a telkom problem, but they will continue to blame openweb until i can confirm that it is not. i am really dissapointed in the poor service from both telkom and openweb.

If anyone from either telkom or openweb is reading this please contact me at : 074 4957622.

keep in mind that my website, forum and game patch servers are dead in the water.

 

[thriel]

ok some answers finaly.

i switched on my account with openweb on the 27th of this month. less than a week ago, i paid R1299 in full :


today minutes ago i recieved this email :

Greetings

Your debit order has come back UNPAID

Please deposit the funds into:

Bank ABSA
Acc No 4064449626
Acc Type Cheque
Branch Code 632005

Reference First & Last Name

To restore your service

Kind Regards

Edwin Roux
OpenWeb.co.za

so it seems openweb cut me off for no reason, i paid them, how can they try and debit my account 6 days later ?

this is poor service and my server and users are paying the price for it. and i cannot get through to try and fix the problem.

 

[StoneCold]

Why not send Openweb's ceo a email at [email protected], that would be the quickest way to get a response from Openweb's side, instead of posting your details here for them to contact you.

 

[Sting]

Rather quick to start blaming people/companies, wasn't it?

 

[thriel]

i mailed [email protected] and still waiting for reply. i will try CEO as well.

but this is really poor service and i know they are on here most of the time, was hoping they would see post and contact me. obviously i was wrong.

 

[thriel]

Rather quick to start blaming people/companies, wasn't it?

if you refering to telkom, dont.

they are far from innocent. i have had so much issues with them the last month alone i already have few more grey hairs. you cannot blame me for not trusting them.

as for openweb. my account is paid. i have reciepts. i just cant get through to them to rectify the problem.

 

[TheRoDent]

We are one week from launch and our net goes down, its been down for hours. The forum, homepage and patch server runs off a 4mb connection which is sufficient for the job it has to do. however, this is a critical time for us, thousands of potential players have their eyes on us, all waiting to see if we will make or break, most of them very critical and ready to turn the smallest problem into the biggest.

Wait, you're running a service that THOUSANDS of potential players have their eyes on, off of an ADSL line ? On a dynamic DNS redirection to http://roseza.dyndns.org/ on an ADSL line that can serve out a maximum of 512kbps in any case?

to put it simply i cannot afford the line to go down, and most definitely not for an extended period of time. it looks and comes accross as very unprofessional.

Well, so does trying to run a "professional" service on an ADSL line!

i am really dissapointed in the poor service from both telkom and openweb.

As will be the "thousands of users" no doubt. You cannot run a professional service on a line that effectively doesn't have a service level agreement, off a retail/consumer ISP on a line that's got an IP address that can change any minute.

keep in mind that my website, forum and game patch servers are dead in the water.

And they will remain that way until you decide to make use of a professional hosting service, in a managed datacentre, with redundant connectivity, and actually PAY for those services.


Really. You need to have your mind read.

 

[thriel]

Wait, you're running a service that THOUSANDS of potential players have their eyes on, off of an ADSL line ? On a dynamic DNS redirection to http://roseza.dyndns.org/ on an ADSL line that can serve out a maximum of 512kbps in any case?



Well, so does trying to run a "professional" service on an ADSL line!



As will be the "thousands of users" no doubt. You cannot run a professional service on a line that effectively doesn't have a service level agreement, off a retail/consumer ISP on a line that's got an IP address that can change any minute.



And they will remain that way until you decide to make use of a professional hosting service, in a managed datacentre, with redundant connectivity, and actually PAY for those services.


Really. You need to have your mind read.

i am running a forum on a 4mb line. not the game server. forum would run on a 256k connection, it doesnt require alot of speed, it does however need bandwidth, which is why i went the uncapped route.

game server is on a 100mbit connection.

and dyndns is there for a reason. if ip changes dyndns updates it. domain is redirected to dns not ip.

i dont need a professional company to run the forum, i am more than qualified to do it myself.

please stay on topic.

 

[davemc]

I dialled 0861 22 44 66.
Engaged tone.

Openweb's website says : Call centre open from: Monday to Friday, between 08:30 and 16:30

FAIL OpenWeb.
FAIL.

 

[thriel]

well. its been off since 11AM, its now 3:21PM. no reply to emails, still cant get through. they close at 4:30 which probly leaves the problem unsolved till monday. i will be requesting 3 days of additional connection if that is the case. as well as a letter addressed to my bank stating they were in error for debit order.

but i have now gone and bought a adsl connection from Axxess, it will hold for the time being. i guess this was a blessing in disguise because i will from now on have to keep spare bandwidth handy. hard lesson to learn this.

Never the less, i am not happy with openweb. not happy at all, and i dont expect i will stay with them unless they can garuntee better service in future.

 

[Zuluzebra]

i am running a forum on a 4mb line. not the game server. forum would run on a 256k connection, it doesnt require alot of speed, it does however need bandwidth, which is why i went the uncapped route.

game server is on a 100mbit connection.

and dyndns is there for a reason. if ip changes dyndns updates it. domain is redirected to dns not ip.

i dont need a professional company to run the forum, i am more than qualified to do it myself.

please stay on topic.

+1

 

[thriel]

3:53PM. nothing yet. line still engaged and no reply to emails. i am guessing this will be off the whole weekend

I am leaving work in 7 minutes, o well.....

openweb you know where to reach me, my number is in the first post.

 

[thriel]

I recieved an email from openweb :

Hi xxxxx

Thank you so much for your email!

It was asked whether you would like the account immediately or scheduled for 1 July, and you indicated immediately.

All our accounts work per calendar month and not 30 days. This was also clearly indicated.

Thus, a payment of R1299 is due for July's access. This payment may be made into:

ABSA BANK
A/C No: 4064449626
A/C Type: Cheque
Branch Code: 632005
Reference: First and Last Name

Email proof of payment to [email protected]

The best discount I can give you this month is R200 off.


Kind Regards
Keoma Wright
Founder

in otherwords what they are saying is that i paid R1299 for 3 days access and they want to claim another payment for july ?

ARE they MAD ? If i had activated near begining of month or middle of a month i could understand, but i barely been a client for a few days.

After the apauling service i recieved from them, i still havnt gotten through via phone, and i tried up until the last minute on friday, they also took a whole day to get back to me via email.

I recieved no prior notice being cut off, the disconnection email came through 2 hours after they cut me off. I have recieved no apology, nothing.

I have emails where i specificly told them not to debit my bank account, and they still went ahead and did it.

Anyone have any advice on what i should do next ? I am so mad right now i feel like claiming my money back and sending them to hell.

 

[HapticSimian]

In their defense, it IS clearly stated that their accounts run within the calendar month... Sucks to have missed it, but they do state it clearly...

 

[thriel]

I had a contract with aerosat for 2 years, my payments were allways up to date, i then took a contract with iburst for 2 years, and again my payments were up to date, often i deposited R700 instead of R689, so i was ahead most of the time, i also recommended a few clients to iburst and they actualy gave me a free omnia anteanne because of it. I would consider myself a good client, are they really prepared to lose good clients because they are greedy and want to claim double payments when they know it is wrong ?

I am sorry, no matter what hidden clauses they have, it does not make this right. and the way they went about the whole thing just stinks.

If push comes to shove i am willing to write off the R1299, its not the end of the world, but i will strongly recommend to anyone i know till the end of time that they should stay away from openweb, and I would think the fact that i am in public spotlight it would make them think twice about this, I will feel no shame doing it, if the service was not so bad it would be another story, Dont forget the prior emails where i specificly told them not to debit my account and i specificly made it clear i have paid and am only due end of july 2009, emails to which i got no reply, i have been abused by this company and to make matters worse they just dont seem to care at all.

because of their incompatence and poor support structure i looked unprofessional on friday when my website and forum went down for 7 hours without any warnings, it took me 2 hours to figure out what was going on and 5 more to get it reactivated. there is no excuse for that.


if they work according to a calender month, isnt there such a thing as pro rata ? i pay extra for the few days before the end of the month. I cannot see that they can charge me a whole R1299 for those couple of days and the law would be on their side.

 

[thriel]

I am obviously not getting anywhere with this.

I have now deactivated my openweb account and signed up with Axxess instead. ( i have written off the R1299 we have wasted on this usesless company. We run a non profit Web server, R1299 may not be alot for some people, but it is a huge loss for us, i will most likely be covering this out my own pocket. )

R1299 for 3 days internet access, where have you ever heard of such a thing ?

I have had to give some sort of explanaition to everyone that experienced downtime on friday.

I have made a detailed post on our forum which can be found here : http://roseza.dyndns.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=122&sid=9b5267099cb25e1913506a15da7f4b39

I have stickied it and will leave it there for all to see. We are days away from our big launch, by this time next week hundreds of people all over S.A will have read that post. Atleast it gives me some satisfaction that other people will be warned to be cautious when dealing with openweb.

 

[TheRidDlerX]

In their defense, it IS clearly stated that their accounts run within the calendar month... Sucks to have missed it, but they do state it clearly...

Bleh i also opened an account on the 30th not reading properly. Wasnt for that much money tho, at least <R100. Just to test it out. If i hadnt read 30th to 30th when activating i wud be in the same kinda boat as you i suppose.

 

[thriel]

they should have charged me pro rata for those 3 days. that would have been the just thing to do.

We are a non profit organisation, our telkom account expired on the 27th, we couldnt wait 3 days for month end, i explained this to them when i signed up. i had no idea they were going to try and charge me again 3 days later.

i'm sorry, but there is no excuse for this on their part.

 

[Kloon]

Openweb can perhaps add a option to their signup thats asks if you want to order the service for the current month or the next month. I Know when I WebAfrica has this option when applying for a service. OpenWeb can perhaps add this option to their billing cycle page.

 

[heynnow]

In their defense, it IS clearly stated that their accounts run within the calendar month... Sucks to have missed it, but they do state it clearly...

It sucks indeed, a good company would make a phone call to confirm this as it is common sense that the customer was not fully aware of what is going on.

Even though it is stated as immediately, the sales rep could've told him, "sir we recommend you go on a smaller bundle till the end of the month and then we start you out on the uncapped next month"


very very bad customer service.
My account went inactive for days when i use to be with them.

Im on Do Broadband now, with Axxess unshaped accounts. I must say Axxess are miles ahead of openweb, even TELSCUM has given me better quality and service than Openweb.

Keoma is a nice guy, but maybe its time to downgrade the business and start looking after your customers.