Webafrica slapped with 30K fine

hmadhi

hmadhi

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Adjudicator's Report: Upheld - Complaint COC#xxxx: Webafrica

Adjudication outcome and sanctions
Breach found in respect of clause D and D6. The member is to place an email address on the contacts page of their website. In addition, the WhatsApp menu should have cancellation as an option on the first page of drop-down menu items if this is the sole process available for cancellation of a service.

The member is fined:

For failure to have the correct contact details the member is fined R15 000.

For the failure to act in good faith towards the customer by having an easy and transparent cancellations process
I fine the member R15 000.

To be paid within 5 days of publication of this report.
—————————————
 
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A friend of mine was in an exact similar case with Webafrica. They refused to release the line and were making life very difficult for them.

I mentioned ISPA to my friend, they studied all of the rules and then mentioned to Webafrica that their is no visible email address to contact, threatening to report them to ISPA.

Webafrica then released it
 
Does anyone know the owners / management of webafrica and what their deal is? Are they just incompetent or are they competently screwing people around? Difficult to understand what's going on behind the scenes of this place.
 
saor said:
Does anyone know the owners / management of webafrica and what their deal is? Are they just incompetent or are they competently screwing people around? Difficult to understand what's going on behind the scenes of this place.
Click to expand...
Customers are not in control here. Corporates do what they want, any recourse is such a tedious process that you just leave it be.
 
Slootvreter said:
Customers are not in control here. Corporates do what they want, any recourse is such a tedious process that you just leave it be.
Click to expand...
So just outright greed and not giving a single **** about ethics? Because it genuinely seems like webafrica have meetings to determine how best to make customers lives difficult.
 
JOEY_8 said:
A friend of mine was in an exact similar case with Webafrica. They refused to release the line and were making life very difficult for them.

I mentioned ISPA to my friend, they studied all of the rules and then mentioned to Webafrica that their is no visible email address to contact, threatening to report them to ISPA.

Webafrica then released it
Click to expand...
that's what most people do, threatening to get their way. I decided to go directly to the ISPA. I got to a point where webafrica offered me a discount on my remaining month and to collect my router. I decided to forfeit the offer for the benefit of the wider ISP community.
 
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hmadhi said:
Adjudicator's Report: Upheld - Complaint COC#xxxx: Webafrica

Elated at the news that my complaint against WA has been upheld.

i can't believe I am posting this thread, while I struggle to get my line released
so that I can join another ISP (started on their whatsapp chat at 8h20 this morning.
It's now 11h10 and still no help.) anyway here are some details from the independent
adjudicator.

Adjudication outcome and sanctions
Breach found in respect of clause D and D6. The member is to
place an email address on the contacts page of their website.
In addition, the WhatsApp menu should have cancellation as
an option on the first page of drop-down menu items if this is
the sole process available for cancellation of a service.

The member is fined:

For failure to have the correct contact details the member is fined R15 000.

For the failure to act in good faith towards the customer by
having an easy and transparent cancellations process
I fine the member R15 000.

To be paid within 5 days of publication of this report.
Click to expand...
This is merely a business expense.
 
Arksun said:
This is merely a business expense.
Click to expand...
Sure, but enough publicity - like this post on a popular tech forum - and more people will be aware of this avenue that they can follow for their escalated cases (seemingly, with favourable results).

It's always sad when this has to be done. Complaining to the ISPA is not the norm, nor should it be.
 
Arksun said:
This is merely a business expense.
Click to expand...
I agree. It is just a business expense. I suspect WA will pay the fine and it will be BAU.

Also customers that lodge complaints through ISPA do not follow through, so nothing changes. I encourage anyone having problems with their isp who is not adhering to the ISPA code of conduct to take the time to lodge their complaint and follow through to the end.
 
Well done OP on persevering. More should follow your example. It has been said but this is hardly sufficient as a punitive measure, certainly not enough for this abhorrent company to change anything.

As we saw on another forum post last week, they're getting even more callous with their operatives now working from home and even less likely to be interested in actually assisting customers over closing down calls as soon as they can. Closing calls and minimum time to close is what they're rated on and there is zero impetus to skill-up and gain the technical expertise to meaningfully assist anyone.
 
saor said:
Does anyone know the owners / management of webafrica and what their deal is? Are they just incompetent or are they competently screwing people around? Difficult to understand what's going on behind the scenes of this place.
Click to expand...
It's weird because WebAfrica used to be the cool gamer's ISP back in the late 2000s, early 2010s. They used to go hard into gaming.

They started the FreeZone project that essentially zero-rated gaming traffic and Steam downloads, which was a big deal back then considering the tiny 1GB or 2GB caps people used to have. They even had CDNs where they'd host game patches and whatnot, which were also zero-rated.

IIRC they were also the guys who managed to convince Valve to deploy a local Steam CDN for the first time, which WebAfrica hosted.

They also had the WAGE gaming project whereby they would host servers for basically every popular multiplayer game back then, and they had the most stable servers too.

It's very disappointing how they went from an ISP that was clearly passionate about what they were doing...to a large faceless corp.

There used to be WebAfrica network engineers and admins that we used to play with that would actually check live what the issue was if we were having an issue on a server.

I loved multiplayer gaming back then...
So good.
 
Arksun said:
This is merely a business expense.
Click to expand...
I remember when MD4E had his thing with Afrihost. He won his case but on paper only as they were fined R10k or something.

ISPA don't fine their ISP friends enough to actually make it or send a message.
 
I like the principal, but honestly that's coming out of petty cash. It doesn't hurt them, and it doesn't send a message to anyone.
 
hmadhi said:
Adjudicator's Report: Upheld - Complaint COC#xxxx: Webafrica

Elated at the news that my complaint against WA has been upheld.

Some details from the independent
adjudicator’s report

Adjudication outcome and sanctions
Breach found in respect of clause D and D6. The member is to place an email address on the contacts page of their website. In addition, the WhatsApp menu should have cancellation as an option on the first page of drop-down menu items if this is the sole process available for cancellation of a service.

The member is fined:

For failure to have the correct contact details the member is fined R15 000.

For the failure to act in good faith towards the customer by having an easy and transparent cancellations process
I fine the member R15 000.

To be paid within 5 days of publication of this report.
—————————————
Click to expand...
Love it should of been more in my opinion.
 
[XC] Oj101 said:
I like the principal, but honestly that's coming out of petty cash. It doesn't hurt them, and it doesn't send a message to anyone.
Click to expand...

Fines aren't tax deductible, so at least it'll hurt them a little bit more than an ordinary tax-deductible expense.
 
I've always said it must be easier to cancel something than it is to initiate something.

Like Telkom you can take out contracts etc online but try cancel.

It's time the rules changed forcing the above.
 
deweyzeph said:
Fines aren't tax deductible, so at least it'll hurt them a little bit more than an ordinary tax-deductible expense.
Click to expand...
I don't know what their margins are like, but considering their size it's small enough to be skipped over on their AFS. A decade ago they were exceeding R 100 million/year in revenue.
 
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