Web Africa's new ADSL pricing revealed

Someone get hold of the WebAfrica mailing lists and make their less Tech-savy subscribers aware of this and the fact that there are much cheaper options. :whistle:
 
waroop said:
Quite honestly this change was more just an aesthetic one, and nonetheless, compared against a number of other providers this is in fact quite competitive- sure not Afrihost but they have publicly stated they are selling at a loss and subsidising their marketing budget to support this.
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You keep bringing this up, even though Afrihost stopped saying that months ago. How have they been able to keep it up this long? do they just have a massive savings account? or did their advertising budget include advertising at the SuperBowl 2010? :D

And why can't you guys do the same thing. Chuck your advertising budget (and all the other extraneous expenses) and just bring us plain simple cheap bandwidth?
 
wamatt said:
Your tone aside, honestly we making the effort. Are other offering such specials? Yes it is buying goodwill absolutely but nevertheless its costing us a real packet. R7 per gb!. But we do recognise myBB and compete. I'm not sure we can say the same for the other major players.

Some say the large guys are not our competitors, but that argument holds no weight. Anyone remember a company called "All you can eat". They were hailed by the mybb informed members as being revolutionary and changing the landscape. Where are they now.
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The same place where you are gonna be in two years time?
 
I am a long time WA user. I have kept faith with them even while everyone else was cutting prices like crazy. I believed that they were going to cut prices soon and I decided to hold out. Now this. It feels like a punch in the stomach.

Whatever the business reasons, this is the worst PR move ever. You don't treat loyal customers like this. Whatever myth webafrica has been selling to us and to themselves is now clearly shown up for what it is. They have gone from being market leaders to being a laughingstock. This is what you call brand suicide. The 30gig account thing of last week seems particularly pathetic in this light - you don't try to play this kind of amature bribing-style pr game with your customers.

I think it is time for some introspection at WA. It used to be good, but i'm leaving WA. It is over.
 
Pilgrim said:
That is a very good question. How do they justify not dropping their prices, when we know that SAT3 prices dropped when Seacom entered the market (heck, even before Seacom went live)



wamatt, when exactly will you be able to lower your prices? If your costs stay the same when international bandwidth costs have come down then there is something very, very wrong with your business model.
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International costs come down. And yes absolutely so do ours since we buy international capacity. The reality again we must separate from the hype.

Do you not remember pre-seacom when everyone said prices would drop 80%. Well guess what folks. It didn't.
 
wamatt said:
Your tone aside, honestly we making the effort. Are other offering such specials? Yes it is buying goodwill absolutely but nevertheless its costing us a real packet. R7 per gb!. But we do recognise myBB and compete. I'm not sure we can say the same for the other major players.

Some say the large guys are not our competitors, but that argument holds no weight. Anyone remember a company called "All you can eat". They were hailed by the mybb informed members as being revolutionary and changing the landscape. Where are they now.
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wamatt. taking a step back. you are the first isp to move over to be a tier 1. now i can imagine that was not cheap and costs would need to be redeemed somehow.

however you can't really blame the mybb populace of expecting a knight and then no cry foul when an ogre shows up. seriously with all the smaller ones in the fry dropping to almost making the R10 mark- the expectancy are obviously going to be great of you guys.

in this regard i'm not really surprised at your pricing, yes sure webafrica with R10 per gig would be nice, hec how about R300 for 1024 uncapped- bit unrealistic expectancy as you yourself have to carry some extra costs that the cheap dogs don't have to worry about...
 
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I guess they need to make up for the 100 X 30Gb @199 accounts they are giving away!
 
...something to point out. when openweb was "selling at a loss" VS ods; who are still with us ;)
 
wamatt said:
Do you not remember pre-seacom when everyone said prices would drop 80%. Well guess what folks. It didn't.
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Prices used to be about R79per GB or greater didnt they?. I'm sure someone was offering R22 per GB. That's 70%. Close enough for me.
 
Well...Im with Afrihost now. Disabled my auto top-up on my WA account...so will just use the last of my bandwidth...any once I have run out, will enable my Afrihost account. Until I see some real change with WA...Im sticking with Afrihost. I wonder how many new accounts got created today at Afrihost. Would be VERY interesting!
 
wamatt said:
Your tone aside, honestly we making the effort. Are other offering such specials? Yes it is buying goodwill absolutely but nevertheless its costing us a real packet. R7 per gb!. But we do recognise myBB and compete. I'm not sure we can say the same for the other major players.
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I think there is a lot of animosity because people have been holding out and now it seems like a waste. I have been on a 10GB account at R490 and have been watching the 10GB @ R290 that is presently being offered by Afrihost but still holding on because of loyalty to WA. It feels like I have been let down by WA. I quite understand the business aspects of it on your side but it doesn't make it any easier to swallow. Yes the DSL complete options are well priced but that doesn't help my 10GB package.
 
wamatt said:
. They were hailed by the mybb informed members as being revolutionary and changing the landscape. Where are they now.
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Informed members... Nope.. the jump ship members maybe.

While I may not be an informed member, I said it as well as I see Acid did now as well. Many people will start recommending Afrihost instead of WA now to clients. I am not going to mail all my existing friends and clients and tell them to all change, Because I believe your service is great for what they need. But if anyone new asks right now. I am going to give them both options, instead of were it previously was WA only.
 
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