Internet5.02.2025

Problems at major South African Internet provider

Several Supersonic customers were double-billed in January and struggled to get help from the Internet service provider’s support channels.

MyBroadband was contacted by a subscriber of the MTN-owned Internet service provider (ISP) who pointed to posts on the consumer complaints platform Hello Peter to show they were not alone.

“My internet hardly works, I pay for 250Mbps/250Mbps and I don’t even reach 30Mbps. My account was debited more than double,” one customer said.

“Trying to get any sort of assistance with either of my issues is a mission impossible!”

A second customer also said they struggled to contact Supersonic customer support through its WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger text chat channels.

After finally getting through to an agent, they were told that the double debit would cover January and February.

When the customer said they did not authorise MTN to deduct money for February from their account, the agent then claimed they were in arrears.

Attempts to escalate the complaint were reportedly met with silence.

MyBroadband contacted MTN for feedback regarding the complaints, and the company confirmed that a limited number of its Supersonic customers were double-billed in January.

“Supersonic confirms that a double-billing issue occurred in January 2025, affecting 300 customers,” a spokesperson said.

“Once we identified the problem, we immediately reached out to those impacted.”

Supersonic said the issue was caused by an unforeseen technical error that resulted in duplicate transactions.

“We deeply regret any inconvenience this may have caused and have implemented new safeguards to prevent a recurrence,” it assured.

“All affected customers received their reimbursements on Tuesday, 4 February 2025, ensuring the matter is fully resolved within one week of the incident,” Supersonic stated.

“At Supersonic, we remain committed to providing exceptional service, and we sincerely appreciate our customers’ patience and understanding.”

MyBroadband has received several complaints about Supersonic’s service levels in recent months, and the company’s Hello Peter page has been flooded with customers complaining about various issues.

In October last year, a MyBroadband forum member complained that they struggled to get support through Supersonic’s official communication channels after attempting to buy a fibre service.

“They do not answer their WhatsApp line, and the telephone line just keeps on ringing,” the prospective customer said.

After two months, they gave up trying to reach Supersonic and contacted another ISP in the hopes that they could get their fibre line up and running.

When the other ISP finally got Supersonic to close the line on their end, Supersonic sent the user a cancellation bill.

“I received a message that I still owe Supersonic a cancellation fee of R899. My question is: Why a cancellation fee when I was not even connected?”

Following the forum member’s complaint, MyBroadband received information that there were major internal problems at Supersonic and a surge of cancellations had led to a backlog.

However, MTN dismissed the claims that there was a cancellations backlog, although it confirmed that there had been internal structural changes.

“It should be noted that in an effort to better serve our customers, Supersonic has been re-designing and streamlining its operations for improved efficiencies,” a spokesperson told MyBroadband.

“Supersonic is not experiencing a backlog of cancellations, nor have they seen an increase in the volumes of cancellation queries or requests which remain at moderate levels,” they continued.

“We are committed to supporting our customers and encourage our customers to utilise our official customer service support channels for any inquiries or concerns they may have.”

Supersonic said customers can reach it via email at [email protected] or call its dedicated support team at 0861 787 377.

“Our customer support staff are always available and ready to assist with any needs. Customers are also advised to login via the website and raise a support ticket to the relevant department,” it said.

Regarding this latter advice, another MyBroadband reader tried raising a ticket with Supersonic on 16 December when they were experiencing extremely slow speeds on their 250Mbps/250Mbps Metrofibre line.

The subscriber said they saw download speeds of 10–50Mbps for several days at the start of the December holidays, while upload speeds appeared unaffected.

They tried rebooting their router and optical network terminal and performed speed tests with a computer plugged directly into the router with an Ethernet cable.

Despite the subscriber clearly explaining that they had already tried rebooting everything and that they had conducted speed tests by plugging in directly, they received the following generic response 48 hours later:

“Please unplug the fibre box and the router for 2 minutes, then plug in the fibre box first and wait for the lights to be stable then plug the router,” the support agent wrote.

“If this does not fix the issue, using a LAN cable to your laptop, Please run a speed test directly from the fibre box. Please run it via speedtest.co.za and send the results.”

Less than 24 hours later, before the subscriber could reply, the agent closed the ticket.

Fortunately, the issue seemed to be temporary and the subscriber said they now receive download speeds of over 150Mbps during peak times, which is better but still well below the 250Mbps they pay for.

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