Afrihost; yesterday’s service at tomorrow’s prices!

On the surface, Afrihost might look like a rare example of a South African company with a focus on service and product innovation, but don’t be fooled. Behind the professional facade is a company which seems stretched, uns****ed and completely lacking in customer empathy & professionalism. Simply put, Afrihost puts process ahead on people, both internally and externally, but their processes are a failure!

They recently closed my account because 4 of my debit orders bounced. My debit orders bounced because they were trying to take money from my account before the scheduled due date. This is both ******* and *********, since they have closed my account because of an issue that originates with their billing system.

After numerous attempts to resolve the issue with their accounts department, it became clear to me that nobody in their accounts department cares to help or even understands the issue. I would simply get the ‘computer says no’ response.

6 weeks ago, I gave up and resolved myself to finding a new web hosting and internet service provider. Problem is, Afrihost have the only copy of my website files on their server (which they confirmed), which, after 6 weeks of painfully being pushed from their accounts department, to their hosting department, to customer service department, and back again, I keep getting a computer generated response back telling me ‘sorry, we can’t help you, please fill out a review form....’

I can’t even begin to catalogue all the calls and mails to them on his review, I’ll need to write a book.

In desperation, I tried calling their CEO Gian and their second in command Mark, but I was simply told that ‘they don’t take calls’!!! I run 2 companies of my own and I’d consider myself a failure & no longer fit to run my businesses if I declared that I no longer engaged with my customers.

Unfortunately, their lack of competent problem solving across all their departments has left me no option but to take legal action and sue them for damages and loss of income.

For anyone out there considering Afrihost as your ISP or web hosting company, big or small, I’d implore you to think twice, they are not what they seem, you might as well lump them in with all the government departments and third world standard service providers in SA, what a disgrace & a shame!