Long standing client left with sour taste in the mouth

I have been a long-standing customer of Afrihost using their fibre service. I recently bought a new home and wanted to get fibre at the new house as well.

Afrihost does have a migrate feature, but I needed internet at both houses for a couple of months while we moved. I wanted to save on costs and downgraded my package at my current house.

This is where the problem started. I could not downgrade using their interface and was told to cancel the service and sign up again at the same address, which I did.

Fast forward a few months and I cancel my service at the old house and Afrihost charged me a cancellation fee as the service was only active for 5 months according to their records. I explained the entire scenario and that they could go back and check that I have been a customer for longer than a year at that address.

They checked and confirmed but said that I got a new router and therefore needed to be charged for it. Now remember that this is 1 month short of the 6 months where this would not have mattered. I returned the router to them at my own cost so that this issue could be resolved.

This still did not help as they said I did not return the router in its original packaging and without the LAN cable. Now I was not asked to include the LAN cable (but I still have it and can give it to them), but the original packaging. That is just another excuse.

I am even more livid because if I had waited one more month this would not be an issue and would only have cost me R697. Now it cost me R999 for the cancellation and R295 to courier the router to them.

Very bad service for a long-standing customer.