The problems at Webafrica are nothing new: they started when the original CEO/founder (Matthew Tagg) left the picture in 2011. As is often the case, when that happens, the PHBs often take over.
Apple is a good example of this effect. Jobs and Wozniak were Apple's foundation: when Jobs was kicked out and the PHBs took over, Apple teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. It took Jobs returning to save Apple, and it's apparent that Cook isn't up to the task that Jobs left behind. It's a similar story over at Webafrica. In the previous decade, the level of support and quality of products were actually kick-ass, because it was a company that actually valued engineering talent and customer satisfaction. Nowadays, I wouldn't touch Webafrica products and services with the proverbial ten foot bargepole -- Wyatt-Gunning and his team of PHBs have driven all of the competent workers out of the organisation.
I was employed by Webafrica at the time (in the development department), and have witnessed the PHB decimation first-hand. For me, the kicker was when our extremely competent development manager had enough, left, and was replaced by no less than an accounting drone, who then proceeded to mismanage the entire department into the ground. A few months of putting up with the incompetence and ineptitude that followed (which bordered on maliciousness at times), and I left for greener pastures myself. From contacts that I still have within the company, the rest of the team abruptly mass-resigned around a year ago, joining their former manager in his new venture (and from all accounts, they're all doing very well for themselves since they made that move). Another example would be the support on this very forum: formerly handled by WAJeff, who was outstanding at the job. In early 2013, his position was made redundant, and he found a new home at a competitor (and is still outstanding at his job); meanwhile, the quality of support coming through the WAHelper account ever since has consistently been poor (the same line of "we will follow up" is continually rehashed with little action seemingly being taken).
In the company's heyday, everything was customer-centric: support was competent and genuinely tried to help the customer, engineering was composed of some of the most competent individuals I've ever worked with, and development continually strived to ensure that customers would only have to contact support as an absolute last resort. For me, the ultimate example of how low Webafrica has sunk was the requirement, introduced late last year, to have to phone in to cancel (previously, this could have been achieved through the customer service area). The Webafrica of the previous decade would never have accepted this: the attitude would have been "we don't want to give the customer a reason to cancel, but if they want to go, let's not actively get in their way".
Ultimately, this has all been lost, and Webafrica is now a shell of its former self; run by PHBs cut from the used car salesmen cloth who are greedy and only interested in how many suckers they can force to part with their hard-earned cash for a quick buck (in this respect, Webafrica bears similarities with Openweb, only the deception is far more subtle and devious). There is no way back from that, unfortunately -- much like the ANC, the fish has rotted from the head down. The best thing to do is for the remaining customers to euthanize the company.
We must admit that things do fall through the cracks sometimes but we always try to rectify such a situation in the best way possible.
