Afrihost cannot deliver what they advertise for Uncapped Fibre

Let me start by saying, I was a very happy Afrihost customer and have recommended them to many of my friends. I find myself regretting that now.

I am an Uncapped Fibre user - about 2 months ago I started seeing a big reduction in my internet speed. It ends up I went over their Fair Usage Policy and was thus being throttled - this wasn't just in peak times, but during the whole day. After the poor service I received during this period I requested to have my line cancelled so i can move to a better ISP. I was then not so subtlety informed that I will be billed pro-rata for the router I received as part of my sign-up. So when Afrihost offers anything "free" you better go read the fine print (which takes about 2-3 links to find on their site). Their offers are only free if you stay with them for 10-12 months. So i decided to stay with them until my router was paid off.

A week later I couldn't take the shaping anymore as I work from home and need fast internet. So I moved over to a Premium Uncapped policy which promises no shaping except when the network is under very load. For the last month I have been shaped every single evening between 18:00-23:00. I have logged multiple tickets, had to send through tracerts and ping tests about 5 times, because I kept being helped by a new consultant who didn't bother reading my history before phoning me (I had to explain my problem about 20 times by now). Not only that, but none of them could actually tell me what was wrong, it was only a month later after demanding they go and speak to the devs that I was informed the whole of Cape Town is being shaped because the network does not have enough bandwidth.

So not only do they advertise a service they clearly can't deliver on - they charge you the full price for it. The support agents are quick to call and friendly, but absolutely lacking in any technical knowledge or even basic product knowledge it seems. I had to go read through the services on the website thoroughly to find the clause that says I will still be shaped during heavy load.

I don't know how else to describe Afrihost's business practices other than *****. Their services and special offers come with fine print to lock you down unless you want to pay some penalty as well as clauses to clear them of wrongdoing when they cannot deliver on the sold product.