15
May
13

Sick Customer Service Award: Afrihost

biglogo1Here at SlickTiger Industries we care deeply about YOU the consumer and want to provide an open and honest forum to celebrate excellent customer service because let’s face it, in South Africa it hardly EVER happens.

I had my doubts when I started this category on the site. We get nailed in the ass so frequently when it comes to customer service, I’d get way more mileage if I changed this to a forum for bitching and moaning.

But that just ain’t my style. Celebrate the positive, give praise where it’s due. Hold hands. Sing Kum Ba Ya, and if you’re looking for an internet service provider don’t even hesitate, go for Afrihost.

We started using Afrihost last year in November because the 3G mobile data we had been using through Nashua Mobile was so over-priced, slow and notoriously unreliable that it was driving us nuts [WARNING: Gratuitous bitching and moaning to follow].

I mean holy shit, we were paying something like R290 a month for (wait for it) 1.5GB of claw-your-face-off slow data. What a total load of shit. And most months we’d end up going over the cap and then heaven help you pal, cause you will get drilled so hard in the gat you won’t be able to walk straight for a week.

 

 

Because here’s the really fucked up thing. When I was with Nashua Mobile / Vodacom, if I wanted to check my data I’d either have to keep an eye out for these crappy smses that were sent to my 3G SIM card notifying me of my data usage (which I ALWAYS forgot to check) or I’d have to log on to Vodacom’s site to check it (which I was terminally useless at remembering the password for).

One month I let things slide for a week without checking only to find that I’d overshot my cap by almost 500MB. Boy did I pay for that mistake – one thousand two hundred South African Ront for having used a grand total of about 2GB. Eina.

It’s a fucking joke. You know how much you pay for 10GB of mobile data with Vodacom? One thousand six hundred Ront! (According to this link on Vodacom’s site).

 

 

Sorry, I’m getting a little worked up here. Reign it back in there Slick, easy Tiger.

Anyway, I was sick of getting shtoomped in the pooper so I decided to do a little digging to sort out an ADSL line in the flat and Afrihost came highly recommended by a lot of the people I spoke with.

Price-wise their offering may not have been the cheapest on the market (at the time I think Axxess had a slightly cheaper offering) but it came pretty damn close.

I’d worked out that if I wanted to go uncapped with a 4Mbps line I was gonna fork out just over R1k a month.

This price changed drastically if I went for a slower line speed, but after the aforementioned face-clawingly-slow speeds I’d experienced some nights on 3G, I wanted the fastest internet money could buy. Also, I’ don’t consume massive amounts of data, so I went for a 15GB capped 4 / 10Mbps line.

 

 

All-in, my ADSL costs me Five hundred and eighty South African Ront every month. And as for speeds, I’m lucky enough to be in an area where I’m connected to a 10Mbps line so I’ve clocked download speeds as fast as 8.26Mbps on www.speedtest.net before. Compare that to the 0.81Mbps speed I was getting on 3G and you can imagine the ear-to-ear grin I get when using the internet now.

But here’s the rub – not only did Afrihost sort out EVERYTHING when it came to getting Telkom guys in to install the line and transferring the line so I pay line rental directly to Afrihost every month, but they kept me informed of their progress every step of the way with emails and smses.

In total it took me a month before I was up and running (the big hold up came from Telkom’s side who really dragged their feet when transferring my line to Afrihost).

If my line gives me any trouble, I can call Afrihost up until midnight and they’ll sort it out. Typically this is a case of about 30mins tops and I’m back up and running. I’m also notified as my data usage hits 50%, 75% and 90% by sms and email and when I hit my cap I don’t get drilled with out of bundle rates, my data just stops.

 

 

If I want more data (at a rate of something like R26 a gig), I just reply to the sms I get when my data runs dry with a number and that’s how many GBs they’ll top me up with.

And best of all, once in awhile, Afrihost decides to be flippin awesome and just sommer give you shitloads of free bandwidth!

In Feb they sent an email saying “Hi Tony, we love the shit out of you. Here, click this link and dig some free bandwidth.” I was a little sceptical but decided to give it a go. After clicking the link a roller appeared on my screen and all these numbers started whirring past until it eventually came to rest on 35%.

Next thing I know, my phone beeps with an sms from Afrihost saying “Congrats, here’s an extra 5GB on your cap, no strings attached. Enjoy!”

 

 

After paying retarded amounts for data, 5GB free just for being a customer was pretty damn sweet.

Get this though, a shitload of their customers apparently complained about this because it only came through during the last week of Feb, so they couldn’t use their free data in time! What a bunch of ungrateful douchebags!

So Afrihost upped the ante and come the first week of March, sent another email apologising for giving us all that rad free data so late in the month and offering to give us MORE free data to make it better!

This time around I clicked the link and almost fell off my chair.

How the fuck is this for amazing:

 

 

With one click my cap went from 15GBs to something like 48GBs! It was retarded! I still had 6GB left at the end of the month, wa-hoo!

Then, at the beginning of this month they send another email saying that for May, June and July they are going to double all our caps just because they love us.

I’ll admit, all the love was getting a little creepy at this point, but whatever DOUBLE MY CAP for the next three months just because I gave them my business? By South African standards that’s basically unheard of.

I can say with 100% certainty that if you’re in the market for insane broadband, you’d be pretty dof not to consider Afrihost and no, they did not pay / bribe me to write this post, I just did it because Afrihost are badass.

End. Van. Storie.

-ST


7 Responses to “Sick Customer Service Award: Afrihost”


  1. 1 jonov
    May 15, 2013 at 9:13 am

    Afrihost has set a new bar in South african service standards. Nobody, in any field of service, has come close to them in my experience. Sometimes its hard to believe their service is so good, in fact it often feels like there has to be some sort of catch…but there isnt, they are just completely and honestly awesome!

  2. May 15, 2013 at 10:43 am

    Welcome to the big leagues Charna! But you may as well just go uncapped. I pay Afrihost R397 a month and last month we used over 250GB.

    Beware, I don’t think they pay your entire Telkom bill, just the ADSL part. You may still have to pay Telkom the line rental fee, unless my billing is just messed up.

  3. 5 David Lipman
    February 16, 2014 at 5:18 pm

    After being one of the original Telkom trial users of ADSL many years ago and knowing what speeds it was capable of, I was never able to get used to the diminishing speeds over the years. I remained faithful all the years, paying untold fortunes for ADSL from Telkom. Always increasing the existing speed (and cost) of the product that they were supplying, because I was told that in order to get the download speeds that I wanted (and was paying for), I needed to upgrade. You may have noticed over the past 6 months or so how the download speed from Telkom has dropped more and more to a point where I have had to go out and pay for 3g data even though I have a 4Meg uncapped line. I even changed to the capped 4 Meg offering as I was told that this would solve my speed issues.
    All that I can say is that I have rarely been able to download faster than 50kb/s.
    This month, I took the plunge and signed up for a 4Meg capped (75Gb) package from Afrihost.
    I am still waiting for my line to be transferred to them.
    From the moment that I the pro rata amount for the rest of the month, I was seeing speeds of 9-10Meg. This is how things work now. I keep wanting to pinch myself to see if I’m dreaming.
    When I want to download something, it just happens at this speed and this has not changed for a moment since I changed.
    I can only commend the package and service that I have received from Afrihost and I too ,write this of my own accord because it is not often that one actually gets what one pays for. A big up to Afrihost!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    • February 17, 2014 at 10:47 am

      Thanks for sharing this story – I’ll let the Afrihost guys know, they love feedback like this and deserve to hear it because exactly like you say, their service, linespeed and costing is beyond awesome.
      -ST


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