Cut out the middleman

After hearing about Afrihost’s great client service, I decided to move to them as my ISP.

Everything was going great and I was impressed with their service until the installation and activation of my line needed to take place.

Upon installation, the installers noted that there was a fibre maintenance issue and that a Vodacom fibre maintenance team had to be sent out to fix it.

I logged a call with the Afrihost call center at 10h00 and was told I was to receive a sms notification with my reference number. At 14h30 I still had not received any reference number and phoned back only to find out from the new call center agent that they could not find any call being logged. We went through the same process again and I was told again that I would receive a sms notification. After giving them an hour I still did not receive any sms.

Calling back again and speaking to another call center agent, they could not locate the first or the second call being logged and went through the entire process for a third time. Fortunately he had the initiative to escalate to the Afrihost Fibre maintenance team after which I received a reference number.

The fibre maintenance issue was then fixed by Vodacom late in the evening and the next morning I started communicating with Afrihost via their whatsapp line to get my line activated. After about an hour the agent could not assist in activating my line and when their call center opened at 08h00 I attempted to speak to someone.

Eventually, in speaking to a call center agent, I found out that an activation request must be sent to Vodacom. This activation can take anywhere from 1 - 24 hours. Different agents gave me different times.

In trying to explain that I run my own business, work from home, and I need the activation to take place sooner than that, all they could do is send a request to the Afrihost relationship manager with Vodacom. I attempted to try and speak to this person, however was told that I couldn’t.

In an attempt to speed up the process I also contracted the Vodacom call center, however they would not assist me as Afrihost is my ISP.

Therefore the moral of the story is always to try and cut out the middleman, Afrihost, and go directly to the main fibre provider because at least then you can speak to someone that can assist in resolving your problem sooner rather than later.

So I remain and wait for my line to be activated and lose income in the process. Next time I will definitely think twice before I consider using Afrihost again.