Web Africa - absolutely shocking service

[Cadavre777]

Web Africa - Resolved

I have decided to scrap the original post because the issue has been resolved and some of the comment may have been unfair towards the ISP.

Mods, please change the orginal thread title to "Web Africa - Resolved". Thanks

 

[SYNERGY]

Personally I've been using WA for couple months now. My only gripe is that they bill the next month on the 23rd or so, but a quick email, reverses the charges, cancels the account etc. I don't even use the support panel.
Personally they have one of the best service levels in the broadband industry.
Oh and CYbersmart/SAOL are one compay. Not WA.

 

[waroop]

Hiya Cadavre777,

Sorry to hear about your poor experience. Could you possibly PM me your client code so I can get this investigated immediately and see exactly where and why things went awry.

 

[phiber]

I had them invoice me on the 23rd for an account which i clearly selected was once off. Waroop since u are around, you can check why h3ll you take peoples money, and then email them that you will only activate the account once they send through proof of ownership on the credit card. That is a DISGUSTING practice IMO!! Will never use you guys again, Openweb provide most of the services you do, and they are hassle free!

 

[squirrel]

WebAfrica have screwed up my account numerous of times when I've specifically asked for it to be once off.

 

[hexium]

Why on earth do you guys create accounts that are "once off" and have to be "disconnected" or "canceled"? These are "contract" accounts, aren't they? (where you have to give a month's notice at least?)

If you want a temporary fix, you're supposed to open a "pay as you go" account. You got to try it some time...I use nothing else. I pay when I want gigs, and I don't pay when I don't want gigs. As simple as that.. no contracts, no lost bandwidth...no tantrums

 

[|tera|]

Thing that ticks me off with WA if they don't answer my questions or do it half heartedly. I recently wrote a short essay with questions that I wanted to forward to my manager and got the standard "here you go" reply. I work for a large company with many branches and if WA gave a hoot they might just have had our business.

Recently my personal Prepaid account has been acting up, not authenticating when it should, I opened a ticket, the account was reset and when I asked what the problem was I'm told it could be a problematic account, and that is? .

Not impressed at all. You always have to go over the standard people's heads at WA to get anything done and it's getting old.

 

[LazyLion]

I've had great service from WA. No complaints here.

 

[Freshy-ZN]

Web Africas only fault here seems to be they didnt make the instructions 110% idiot proof

 

[hsmnel]

WA GREAT

Web Africas only fault here seems to be they didnt make the instructions 110% idiot proof

Agree, I have had nothing but GREAT service from WA. Think some people just like to get more post up

I cannot believe that they will give great, fantastic service to some people and bad service to others.

Go WA Go

 

[cyberarmy]

Thing that ticks me off with WA if they don't answer my questions or do it half heartedly. I recently wrote a short essay with questions that I wanted to forward to my manager and got the standard "here you go" reply. I work for a large company with many branches and if WA gave a hoot they might just have had our business.

Recently my personal Prepaid account has been acting up, not authenticating when it should, I opened a ticket, the account was reset and when I asked what the problem was I'm told it could be a problematic account, and that is? .

Not impressed at all. You always have to go over the standard people's heads at WA to get anything done and it's getting old.

I agree. Saw numerous people posting their problem here (including my own) and it's sorted only after management involvement.

 

[TheBandit]

Ive also had the problem where i create an account for only that month and specify instructions that it is once off and not to be renewed, but it still gets renewed.
I then have to email them to cancel which they do promptly and reverse the charges...

I have asked them to add in an option when creating a service so we can easily specify a once off account which can automatically be canceled come the end of the month but it falls on deaf ears.

 

[|tera|]

I agree. Saw numerous people posting their problem here (including my own) and it's sorted only after management involvement.

Thank you for backing me up. Don't get me wrong, I love the ease of usage with the accounts. WebAfrica probably has good service and support for some people, but quite frankly, a lot of their mistakes are under rug swept by their fans and that's just as old. If there are problems, sort it out, don't do a run around with us.

 

[waroop]

Ive also had the problem where i create an account for only that month and specify instructions that it is once off and not to be renewed, but it still gets renewed.
I then have to email them to cancel which they do promptly and reverse the charges...

I have asked them to add in an option when creating a service so we can easily specify a once off account which can automatically be canceled come the end of the month but it falls on deaf ears.

Hi there TheBandit,

It sounds like what you are wanting is our prepaid packages - you can just buy GB's as you go and there is no monthly recurring fee:
http://www.webafrica.co.za/adsl/prepaid/

That being said this issue has come up numerous times on the forums, thus I have asked our graphical design team to put together a button 'Looking for prepaid' on all of our DSL-Data package ranges.

 

[PostmanPot]

Hi there TheBandit,

It sounds like what you are wanting is our prepaid packages - you can just buy GB's as you go and there is no monthly recurring fee:
http://www.webafrica.co.za/adsl/prepaid/

That being said this issue has come up numerous times on the forums, thus I have asked our graphical design team to put together a button 'Looking for prepaid' on all of our DSL-Data package ranges.

Hi waroop

Off topic, but could you let me know if a maximum of 20 email recipients is a WebAfrica limit or if it is a SAIX limit?

 

[waroop]

Not impressed at all. You always have to go over the standard people's heads at WA to get anything done and it's getting old.

Hi Teraside,

I feel that is a bit of a generalisation, just in tickets (support emails) alone we resolved around 13,000 in Oct, of which management very rarely needed to be involved with. All while keeping an average response time of 140 minutes to respond to each email.

I am in no way disputing though that you may have experienced differently, could you perhaps PM me your client code so we can follow up on some of your queries to see how we can improve, as well as possibly borrow a few minutes of your time to just chat and hear about some of your direct experiences with WA?

 

[waroop]

Hi waroop

Off topic, but could you let me know if a maximum of 20 email recipients is a WebAfrica limit or if it is a SAIX limit?

Hi PP, It would depend on which smtp server you are utilising as your outbound SMTP server - if it is smtp.saix.net it would be SAIX. If you are just using WA Webmail, or smtp.yourdomain.com it would be a WA limit.

In case you are wondering why we enforce this limit it is to 1) reduce spam and 2) ensure service levels are maintained on our mail servers (avoid blockages).

 

[waroop]

Hiya Cadavre,

I decided to peg the account with a number of tickets

Do you perhaps have multiple accounts? As I only see 1 ticket under your account currently? I will see you are called first thing tomorrow to see this whole situation is resolved as soon as possible.

Finally the account is deleted but I'm still billed for it, I decide to leave it hoping they can take a subtle hint and realise I dont pay for something I dont get.

Months go by and to get rid of that horrible blemish of an unpaid bill, I give in and pay for the account I shouldnt have even been billed for. Makes you wonder if they have been recruiting out of iBurst's billing department .

That is completely outrageous! I will see this is investigated immediately and (provided the account(s) were not utilised) refunded immediately - please accept our most sincere apologies.

Don't tell me it takes two days for someone to process a cancellation which should be automated in the first place.

Most of our cancellations are automated, however to guarantee service cancellations we do sometimes need up to 2 days in certain instances. As per our AUP:
http://www.webafrica.co.za/docs/aup.html
Please note we require notification of non-renewal within at least 2 business days prior to the renewal date.

under harsh working conditions to get work done.

WA is renowned for having some of the finest working conditions:
http://www.webafrica.co.za/about/waplex/

Feel free to swing over for a cuppa and visit us sometime even

 

[Gnome]

I've used WA for most of the time up until recently, I don't know if it's a Telkom issue or WA issue but I keep getting Gateway timeouts and for some reason when I use my Telkom account, I don't get the problem but when I use the WA account I constantly get gateway timeouts. It's only near the end of the month tho.

If I may ask in this thread (we'll see if I get a proper answer), is the prepaid account a PROPER SAIX ADSL account that you resell or something you cooked up?

Just so we are clear I'm not saying it's a WA issue I'm trying to determine where the issue is emerging from.

 

[waroop]

If I may ask in this thread (we'll see if I get a proper answer), is the prepaid account a PROPER SAIX ADSL account that you resell or something you cooked up?

It is resold SAIX bandwidth.

I've used WA for most of the time up until recently, I don't know if it's a Telkom issue or WA issue but I keep getting Gateway timeouts and for some reason when I use my Telkom account, I don't get the problem but when I use the WA account I constantly get gateway timeouts. It's only near the end of the month tho.

Wow that sounds strange, it certainly shouldn't be happening, I will pass this along to our senior ADSL technician and ADSL divisional manager to investigate immediately.

@ all forumites: Has anyone else experienced anything like this?