Afrihost
Reviews and Complaints

You people charge ridiculous amounts and it changes every month. You charge late fees even if its the same day Im supposed to pay. No provider does that. Late fees are only applicable if you're paying the next day. Just today I was charged R150 as my card bounced back. Mind you, today is still the 1st. Your service is appalling and Im def cancelling month end. Internet isnt good either. I had no internet for 2 weeks.

There is NO service, it is now 3 days and I did not receive a call from your technical or service department. I actually want to cancel my 2 x subscriptions and it seems your are fine with that. For 3 days I beg for service on a ticket number that was given by your whats up service. I followed up the next day, they promised every time (all on writing) to escalate, NOTHING, THIS MORNING again, they promised before 12 today someone will contact me. I am confident it wont happen due to the history of service over the (3) days

To whom it may concern,

On 25 April 2023 we submitted an order for a new 40 Down and 10 Up Fiber package from the Client Zone as my aunt had just moved into a new townhouse with existing Fiber infrastructure from Frogfoot.

After signing up, we received a few Electronic Mails from Afrihost's mailing system. One of those Electronic Mails stated that since we already have Fiber Infrastructure installed on the premises from Frogfoot, all we require is an activation.

We accepted this, and awaited the arrival of the Huawei modem which would be provided by Afrihost. Then almost 2 weeks later on 4 May 2023 I decided to contact Afrihost as it was concerning that the Client Zone stated that the Fiber Order is pending, and Afrihost had in no way attempted to contact us to notify us of any delays.

I reached out to Afrihost via their Whatsapp support channel and was assisted by an agent. According to the agent there was already another order active on our line (Previous House Owners ISP) with Frogfoot and that we would need to send through proof of address as well as a picture of the Fiber ONT box from our account email that is registered with Afrihost.

Upon doing this we received a response from the agent stating that they will get back to us and no ETA was provided to us.

The next day, 5 May 2023 I setup the modem as one of the agents on a previous chat told me to check if I could connect to afrihost.com from the ONT directly. So, I made an http request to afrihost.com from the ONT directly just to see if they have activated the line yet. To my astonishment it was not connecting.

I then reached out to Afrihost via their Whatsapp channel again, I was then told by another agent that my line is still on hold with the previous owners ISP until 20 May 2023 and that they have put in a request to have it released earlier. I asked for an ETA and the agent just copied and pasted the same response multiple times.

Our problem here is that after 2 weeks of waiting it doesn't seem like there is much congruence between the expected customer experience and the customer experience given to us by Afrihost.

Had I not contacted Afrihost to find out if there's a reason for the hold up, no one would have picked this up. It's as if I am dealing with a group of people who have no clue what business processes to follow in certain instances.

Many years ago, we used to deal with a telecommunications company called Telkom where we received what we perceive as some of the worst customer experiences ever. We then decided to move to Afrihost as this was an up-and-coming company. As a Software Developer who always works with the most bleeding edge tech daily, this made sense and we received good service here and their customer experience was excellent.

I cannot say the same for the past few years, where we have had nothing but trouble upon each and every new internet setup as well as billing. Sometimes as companies grow, they forget about those who supported and recommended them to everyone in the beginning, and I am sad to say it, but I will not recommend this company to anyone going forward. Unfortunately, I had recommended it to my aunt as I thought things might have changed after all these years.

We are sitting in the year 2023 and are moving into the 4th industrial revolution with electric cars and the internet of things, so things like this shouldn't be happening. From a business process point of view something needs to change as there seems to be a form of disjointedness between your level 1 support agents and the rest of the business.

Thank you,

Mr Gajjar

Software Developer

Good day

I have a huge problem I need assistance with, I recently lost my Phone and bank card, which are all currently blocked. I am unable to get into client zone or pay fast to change my card details because they require verification from my cell number which I do not have. because of fraud reasons I am struggling to get my number working again.

I have called a couple of times to find any alternative way to make payments, but its either the call gets cut off or I’m put through to someone who puts me through to someone else… really frustrating.

My last conversation was with a gentlemen Kgatliso Riba who said I can make a payment on your Standard bank account no.[protected] and use my Afrihost ref: [protected]. Payment was made and POP was sent to client services, accounts and support but my internet is still down and no feedback has been given to me

I had to keep on calling for feedback and I'm told there is nothing to be done except to refund after I was told to make an eft payment by a person who works for Afrihost and I did as instructed and I will not wait 7 – 14 working days for a refund and stay without a service for the whole month when I have been informed of another option and that payment can be allocated. now I'm being told to wait another month to get the money back.

I have made a payment to Afrihost, no one told me about my account being prepaid or not up until I called for feedback when my emails where not answered, and when the WhatsApp agent told me he cant do anything as if I came up with all the information for payment on my own. . The money is in your account and now I have to wait 7 to 14 days again for me to get it back. Unfortunately I cannot accept that and I find that to be lazy thinking or unrealistic as I'm sure you are well aware that livelihood and households use internet.

please open my internet, I work with it daily and the whole household as well

Hi, I have been on WhatsApp and calls with Afrihost consultants since yesterday (7 April 2023) again. I spent almost 6 hours of my time during Easter weekend begging the consultants to ask someone senior at Afrihost to contact someone senior at Vumatel to assist. We have no fibre again since 7 April 11am. This has been an ongoing issue since 27 March 2023 and I was without fibre for a week and other people in my complex longer. Vuma has been providing the same update for the past 27 hours, Afrihost doesn't know if that message means they are working on it or not.

I spoke to Sandra, Gift, Cynthia, Oritile and Ziyanda from Afrihost since 7.30am today (8 April) and all of them could not assist. Ziyanda actually puts the phone down on me, this is the worst customer experience I have had in my life. Leryl Abrahams, one of the leads, told Sandra this morning that they cannot contact someone senior at Afrihost to assist with calling someone senior at Vuma urgently. I also emailed Leryl 2 weeks ago when the fibre was an issue and he never responded.

If customers were allowed to engage with Vuma directly then I would do that, however they don't allow this, the ISP's only have this luxury, and this is the service we pay for. This is such an inconvenience and waste of my time. I have literally been online and on calls with Afrihost for a total of 12 hours in the past 2 1/2 weeks. What am I paying for? Does no one care for customers anymore?

No one at Afrihost is going the extra mile and it seems like they are too scared to ask Vuma any questions or they are lazy. I understand there are protocols in place, but no senior person is engaging on this matter with Vuma since 27th of March, there is no urgency from Vumatel. No care and consideration for customers.

No one at Afrihost has answers to why is this a problem since 27 of March. How long are customers going to struggle, if they keep implementing interim solutions? When is a permanent solution going to be implemented?

Good day,

After seeing an ad I contacted a well known ISP regarding fibre-to-thehome via their WhatsApp chat. This was on 09/03/2023. After stating that I would like to migrate my current ISP (and some confusion on their side), I was asked to confirm my address. Which I did. The agent then stated that there is a 20/10 mbps for R497. At this point I proceeded to give notice to my current ISP. I then on 25/03/2023 contacted the new ISP via email. By the 28/03/2023, after several emails, another agent confirmed the same 20/10 package as mentioned above. Soon after, another (third) agent replied with: "I profusely apologize for the confusion and any inconvenience caused.

To clarify all of this, this is the information I have gathered with regards to the promotion ****ISP is running.

1. The promotion is only for new sign ups (installation) this excludes migrations.".

To which I replied: "These t's & c's should have been brought to my attention by YOUR staff(two individuals on separate occasions) before I cancelled with ****ISP.

I made it very clear that I wanted to migrate and what my address was.

Surely the onus to see if I qualify, should be on your consultants".

The last reply from them was: "I apologize on behalf of my colleagues for misleading you.

The mistake was not mentioning the T & Cs of the promotion, I profusely apologize for that inconvenience caused.

You can contact your ISP to retract the cancellation, as there is a 30 day period served before the official Termination.

Again my apologies for the misleading information on our end".

I have spoken to Keketso in February and she advised that the sim card could be problematic and this would be escalated to to another department to check if there was a problem and that she would come back to me this was not done!

Five weeks later after hearing nothing i once again contacted your Client Zone and spoke to Thabo and he had to listen to the same story again and he advised me that all he could do was to follow up what Keketso said she would do and to date I have once again heard nothing!its is now another 5 weeks

One wonders how long I need to wait for a response to this email

Regards

Michele Pretorius

[protected]

6 days and counting and today I get asked for POA WHICH I had no idea what that means, It turns out to be that which you know, I am sure. Anyway, you should pick up the W app chat that I just ended with your very rude consultant.

Initially, I was told it would take 3 days, and no mention of POA etc.

Anyway, I am sure you are not interested. The Wapp call came from Sharon Marx [protected]. And to think I switched due to the initial service I received from you, what a shame

I requested for my fibre line to be relocated since I moved houses. On the 7th February I received an sms that the relocation was successful and that my fibre line was active. However, I have been without internet since. I logged a call for this to be resolved and I was told Openserve will sort it out within 48hours. 48hours came and gone and until today I do not have internet connection. I am tired of calling Afrihost and it is not acceptable that I am paying for a service that I am not receiving!

Dear Afrihost, I am unable to log into Clientzone to cancel my Afrihost account. For two days I have had "helpers" trying to resolve my login issue, without result.

If I cannot login, I cannot change to LTE Sim Only - then my only solution is to leave Afrihost after many years. I have no need for hosting anymore.

Please call me asap to resolve. My login is mta.[protected]@yahoo.com and you have my cell number. I am awaiting your call.

Illerate idiots has been dealing with me that is the reason I had 2 call more than 20 times in 1 day & still nothing gets done, logged a request the 15th feb 2023, the call centre says vuma has not opened the email & today is the 20th yet the turn around time is 72 hours, I have dealt with these idiots,the names goes as follows lerato m, lusanda , sipho,dineo,aneliso,nombaso,lusanda I stopped taking names after the last idiot, even the manager is useless I believe the name is Wanda...I Wanda if he gets anything done, my word ,Afrihost u really have the worst service but are so quick to take peoples money...i wonder if the CEO is aware of the lack of Customer service & lack of urgency in this team...goodness i would never want to recruit such inefficient people

I lost fibre connection last week. Since then I cannot even count the amount of consultants I have had to deal with, the amount of times I was told to reboot, try connecting on your laptop. Try this site. Try that... and the list goes on. Sometimes I do this 2 or 3 times with the hope that it will be resolved. To add to this the consultants, in order to not be penalized make sure they are always the last ones to contribute to a be chat even if they have nothing of value to add. This goes from silly things as emojis and thumbs up signs to the occasional OK. They also distract you from closing a call by trying to make it look like a chat is abandoned instead of closing it so you may not give feedback on their service. They are well aware before the chat even ends that they will receive a bad rating because they take no initiatives ve even when prompted by me, to actually resolve the issue but tell you they are escalating. I am now so used to their internal antics that I have to tell them to close a chat and they somehow either act oblivious or like they have no idea what I mean until I point it out to them. That is just part of my frustration. Besides spending copious amounts of my day, everyday for the past 6 days I still have no resolution to my issue. They refuse to get someone out to resolve the issue as well. They clearly don't care and will still debit my account come the end of the month, for the full value until I formally log a request which takes ages to humbly request they refund me for the days I have had no fibre connection. The refund is nothing in comparison to what I have spent in purchasing data over these 6 days. I know this because this is the 3rd time they have done this to me. There is no way to speak to a senior manager or escalate or even know if they have made anyone in the universe aware that there is an issue. The worst is I was initially told by 2 consultants, one telephonically and one on their chat that the fibre in the area was down when in fact it was not. I cannot change providers as I have to pay off my initial set up fee so I am bound to them for the foreseeable future. Extremely frustrating and I need urgent assistance.

I diced to use Afrihost as my ISP through Openserve, on the 8th of February 2023 Openserve came and istalled the fibre line and fibre router, on the 10th they debit my account for R747.75, up to now I have not yet recieved the internet router from them so could not use the internet yet, but they recon that the line is active and I could have used it and it is not there fault if I didn't use the internet.

2 days after signing up I cancelled cause they could not assist me with getting the network working.I made contact with there tech support. After a total of 6 hours on the phone with there technician they still could not resolved the matter. I requested to escalate the matter several times and all I got was managers can’t assist they are in meetings. I request please refund my monies. Afrihost could not deliver a service so it’s unfair to let me pay for a service I’m not receiving.

I am an Afrihost customer for a few years now, the past two years I m experiencing problems, whereby I simply lose internet, it is now a week I still do not have internet, after hours calling Afrihost for assistance with no success, they simply can not fix the problem, the operator ask you hold the call for up 40 minutes at a time. at times they never come back to you, then you informed they will escalate the problem and even give you a ticket number, no one ever comes back to you and the problem remains, the after-hours staff is, to say the least totally incompetent in assisting to solve the problem.

I am utterly frustrated and irritated with the service from Afrihost, should you ask to speak to a supervisor or manager, they are never available, and it is impossible to speak to a more senior staff member in an attempt to get assistance to solve the problem.

It is now a week and my internet is still not resolved.

I need to speak to a competent supervisor or manager to assist with this ongoing problem, the service to say the least is pathetic.

Thembekile Ndongeni

Attachments

Wed, Jan 18, 10:52 AM (2 days ago)

to accounts, support, Info

Good day

I am writing this email as a very frustrated and annoyed customer at the process that was followed and now leaving me to constantly following up and not getting no assistance or further delay. I am now sending this email to accounts and wish to also escalate it to a manager or head of department because this process has been frustrating.

I got wifi connected for my family in November last year and have been having issues with billing. The debit order date is 1st of every month but the issue is that the debit order goes in very late on the 1st and as a result other debit orders would debit before, unfortunately I put away money for the wifi and i have other debts that i need to pay (this is no fault to the network) but it adds to my frustrations that it debits late in the day of the 1st of the month. I have since changed the account number to avoid the issue in future.

On or around 02 December 2022 I missed a payment and contacted your whatsapp line for assistance to make manual payment from my side. Please note the timelines for this transaction below: please see the screenshots of all the conversations on the word document attached.

02 December 2022

I was assisted by Nonhle S who gave me the wrong payment avenue, she advised me step by step on how to pay using easy pay and provided me with the reference number to use and I followed the instructions as per her advice.

03 December 2022

I was assisted by Tinyiko K. I followed up on the payment that I had made because usually it takes a few hours to be reconnected once payment is done but we had no connection 24 hours later. I provided him with the Proof of payment that I received from Easy Pay. He/she advised that it will reflect 24hours later.

04 December 2022

I was assisted by Kamohelo M who advised that he/she sent the POP to accounts/ billing and they will respond the following Monday 05 December 2022 and was provided with a reference number (TICKET ID: SUU - [protected]).

05 December 2022

I was assisted by Siyabonga K. I was following up on the payment, we were still not connected with the wifi. He advised that the accounts department advised him that they do not allocate payments that were done via Easypay but only that of Payfast. This is where the issue began. He advised that I was advised wrong by Nohle S who said I must use EasyPay instead of PayEasy. He advised me to contact EasyPay for the allocation of the funds. ( My frustration was that I paid but no service was given and the days that passed in that month, I was not going to be refunded or the days be forwarded to the following month, so I was paying for something that I did not have).

8 December 2022

I was assisted by Gildo M to follow up with the payment and reconnection of the wifi, he advised that the payment was not received for December. I kept having to explain my situations to every agent and provide the POP but no one was able to assist. He advised to request a refund from Easy Pay

I contacted EasyPay and they sent me the POP and the allocation document which I have attached for your ease of reference. I called EasyPay for about 3 days consecutavly to follow up and they told me that they allocated the funds to Vuma and that they were not able to give me a refund, and they advised that I must go back to afrihost to request the refund.

I requested another payment to be done so that we can be connected at home and paid double at this point of the month. Payment went through and we were reconnected on this day.

14 December 2022

I was assisted by Themba M, I had to give him again the history of the issue where Nonhle S provided wrong issue and provide the POP again to another agent which was very annoying and frustrating to do all the time (I thought that notes are done on my account so that the history is there for other agents to avoid repetition of the same issue over and over again). Themba advised that he placed the refund with accounts on my behalf and will take 7 to 14 working days to reflect. Themba even sent me a sms notifying me of the refund. So far he was the only agent that was proactive in this matter and I appreciate his service. The working days counting from 14 December, the payment would have been reflecting on or around 06 January 2023 (I counted excluding the public holidays in December 2022 and beginning of January 2023).

03 January 2023

I was assisted by BongiNkosi M and I sent him a screenshot of the sms from Themba and wanted to check that the refund was at least in progress and took into consideration the festive season. He said he will follow up with accounts and he also advised that the payment would reflect Monday, which would have been 06 january 2023 (which is the accurate date as per the calculation above).

16 January 2023

I was assisted by Carol K to follow up on the refund which has not reflected in my account and was past the due date that I was told that it would reflect and I also gave accounts more time but still the refund has not reflected. Carol advised that she will send a follow up email to accounts and will get back to me later in the day and I am still waiting for her feedback to date.

18 January 2023

I was assisted by Nomciqibelo P and she advised me that I should contact the accounts department and sent me the details.

I also asked Themba if the money can be used to pay January to avoid the process of following up which I think would have been easier than me having to repeat myself and follow up continuously every second day.

I sent an email and have not heard from them to date.

My internet has been off for the past 6 days.

I called in on Friday to get it resolved and got mediocre assistance. On Saturday i called in again and got absolutely no assistance.

They are quick to take my money at month end but very slow to provide the service. I have lost a week's usuage but will obviously be charged the full amount essentially i have trown a weeks worth of money in the water.

This is so frustrating!

I have been using afrihost for over 6 years and most people I know complain about your service. I've spent money over three routers so far, since I had no option of reusing the existing one. Because of load shedding I have opted for a fibre connection, big mistake. Not only was I told to buy a laptop that can connect the wire inorder to activate my internet, I've been made to wait for over a week now. The error keeps on telling me my internet is not connected. I've spoken to different consultants who do not know what they are doing. I've spent thousands so far and i know you'll fight me for my refund. I'm stuck with three routers now. I have decided to forfeit and look for another service provider. Be assured I will recommend to everyone I know, not to bother with afrihost. Your standard of service has dropped to zero.

We have started our journey with Afrihost last year. We went with a person which was recommended to us through another big company to set up our domains. Now that we need to upgrade to the next package, we are told that this guy put the domains under his own name and we can not make any changes. Needless to say, he is missing in action now. Mails and calls have been going up and down since November without any luck. We are a company and we have no mails at the moment. We have sent through all documentation as requested and since last week all I hear is we must give him 24 hours to respond to Afrihost's mail. 24 hours turned out to be longer than a week now with the same excuse every time I phone them. This is really getting ridiculous now. Just give us our domains back to take to another service provider.

1. Forcing one to use specific routers for Fixed LTE packages when other, equally capable routers work perfectly well.

1. Blocking a SIM from network access after 3 hours of perfectly fine use under the guise of not being an approved device by MTN.

Afrihost account order AFR654654.

Device used: D-link LTE-A WiFi router.

3. Not having an option to refund for paid service which was not even used for 4 hours.