jeevadotnet
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2018
- Messages
- 292
- Reaction score
- 238
I really want to know what these guys are smoking.
I own 2x "Afrihost Mobile Monthly" Simcards. Both sim cards haven't been in use for quite some time and were eventually lost.
Wanting to make use of them again, one as a backup for HASSIO connectivity if both my FTTH lines were to fail, and the other one for my prototyping this ESP32 AIO (GPS/LTE/Solarpower/LiFePo4/WiFi) device, I got in contact with Afrihost.
What a rabbit hole, wasting countless hours this has been.
First of all, they tell me I need to go to MTN to do a sim swap. I head out to my nearest MTN franchise, where I queued for almost 3 hours. Got my two prepaid sim cards, just to be told they don't do Afrihost sim swaps, I need to phone Afrihost.
I came back and phoned Afrihost and they said, nope, you must go back to the franchise to get it sim swapped. The next day I head back to the MTN franchise, again a “massive queue”. 20 MTN staff in the shop but only 1 helping clients, the rest standing around talking to themselves. The lady informed me again, MTN doesn’t do Afrihost sim swaps, I must phone Afrihost.
Back to Afrihost, now they inform me I must do a sim swap myself from a cellular phone. However, this procedure doesn't work, it just errors out prompting that the sim swap cannot be processed. Afrihost then tells me, even though this is a service sold by them, they don't offer support on it and hands me MTN's head office number.
Okay, so where must I phone MTN from, if the MTN sim card doesn't work? Let's say this was my only sim card, then I was out of luck.
I phone MTN HO, via my contracted phone & Switchtel. MTN helpdesk has no clue to who I must speak regarding sim swap issues. With their horrible call quality, I went through 16 call drops and spend 2h30 with them trying to speak to someone. I was probably transferred about 30 times. Eventually, someone told me, they only have 1 staff member and will get back to me sometime. Guess what nobody phoned back.
I went back to the MTN franchise. A smarter guy there checked out my numbers and then informed me that the numbers are out of circulation and that I must contact Afrihost about it. From the MTN shop, I phone Afrihost and the helpdesk agent and inform him that MTN says the numbers are out of circulation but still registered in the Afrihost number pool. Afrihost agent tells me okay great, I must just get a prepaid sim card from MTN (which I already did on a previous occasion). Then I must e-mail the helpdesk with the old number & new number and ask them to create a new service for me and assign my existing connectivity package to it.
I get back home, a couple of days go by and then I fire off the e-mail as instructed by the Afrihost agent.
Afrihost replies that this process is not possible since Afrihost doesn’t offer the package anymore. I need to cancel the old package and sign up for a new package.
Now, this is the first word that they cannot migrate this package, irrelevant to what my numbers were, they could have mentioned this in the first sentence of my first call. Over 7 hours spend on the phone with 3 trips to the Mall.
With cryptic replies from the Afrihost helpdesk agent, one stating “I see your simcard is being cancelled”. I decided to sign up for a 500mb package just to get the other sim card going. Then the helpdesk agent e-mails me stating he can see I signed up for a new package and closes the ticket.
This is why I cancelled 5 of my FTTH lines with Afrihost. The drivel you have to deal with just to get to a knowledgeable person.
Haven’t had this issue once with WebSquad FTTH, the other day my Vumatel line was having issues, and the first guy I spoke to went through my Mikrotik CCR with me checking the logs. With Afrihost you will be lucky if the agent can count to 10.
I own 2x "Afrihost Mobile Monthly" Simcards. Both sim cards haven't been in use for quite some time and were eventually lost.
Wanting to make use of them again, one as a backup for HASSIO connectivity if both my FTTH lines were to fail, and the other one for my prototyping this ESP32 AIO (GPS/LTE/Solarpower/LiFePo4/WiFi) device, I got in contact with Afrihost.
What a rabbit hole, wasting countless hours this has been.
First of all, they tell me I need to go to MTN to do a sim swap. I head out to my nearest MTN franchise, where I queued for almost 3 hours. Got my two prepaid sim cards, just to be told they don't do Afrihost sim swaps, I need to phone Afrihost.
I came back and phoned Afrihost and they said, nope, you must go back to the franchise to get it sim swapped. The next day I head back to the MTN franchise, again a “massive queue”. 20 MTN staff in the shop but only 1 helping clients, the rest standing around talking to themselves. The lady informed me again, MTN doesn’t do Afrihost sim swaps, I must phone Afrihost.
Back to Afrihost, now they inform me I must do a sim swap myself from a cellular phone. However, this procedure doesn't work, it just errors out prompting that the sim swap cannot be processed. Afrihost then tells me, even though this is a service sold by them, they don't offer support on it and hands me MTN's head office number.
Okay, so where must I phone MTN from, if the MTN sim card doesn't work? Let's say this was my only sim card, then I was out of luck.
I phone MTN HO, via my contracted phone & Switchtel. MTN helpdesk has no clue to who I must speak regarding sim swap issues. With their horrible call quality, I went through 16 call drops and spend 2h30 with them trying to speak to someone. I was probably transferred about 30 times. Eventually, someone told me, they only have 1 staff member and will get back to me sometime. Guess what nobody phoned back.
I went back to the MTN franchise. A smarter guy there checked out my numbers and then informed me that the numbers are out of circulation and that I must contact Afrihost about it. From the MTN shop, I phone Afrihost and the helpdesk agent and inform him that MTN says the numbers are out of circulation but still registered in the Afrihost number pool. Afrihost agent tells me okay great, I must just get a prepaid sim card from MTN (which I already did on a previous occasion). Then I must e-mail the helpdesk with the old number & new number and ask them to create a new service for me and assign my existing connectivity package to it.
I get back home, a couple of days go by and then I fire off the e-mail as instructed by the Afrihost agent.
Afrihost replies that this process is not possible since Afrihost doesn’t offer the package anymore. I need to cancel the old package and sign up for a new package.
Now, this is the first word that they cannot migrate this package, irrelevant to what my numbers were, they could have mentioned this in the first sentence of my first call. Over 7 hours spend on the phone with 3 trips to the Mall.
With cryptic replies from the Afrihost helpdesk agent, one stating “I see your simcard is being cancelled”. I decided to sign up for a 500mb package just to get the other sim card going. Then the helpdesk agent e-mails me stating he can see I signed up for a new package and closes the ticket.
This is why I cancelled 5 of my FTTH lines with Afrihost. The drivel you have to deal with just to get to a knowledgeable person.
Haven’t had this issue once with WebSquad FTTH, the other day my Vumatel line was having issues, and the first guy I spoke to went through my Mikrotik CCR with me checking the logs. With Afrihost you will be lucky if the agent can count to 10.
