Poor 3rd party supplier to Afrihost

I was excited with a Afrihost Rain network deal which I place on the 4th October 2017. it was 50GB of real speed internet and after paying for a 10MB ADSL line and only ever getting 6MB the deal could not have come at a better time. Telkom cables ****** shortly followed by a direct lightning strike and seeing my R2300 worth of netgear router with the telkom connection and cable still smoking the deal was manna from heaven.

I have been with Afrihost on and off I think since about 2001 and watched their service improve year after year so this came as a shock. Afrihost itself is not entirely to blame but they are guilty of choosing the people they deal with, in this case Digital Planet the supplier of the router. All went well the order placed on the 4th October, a couple of days later payment confirmation. Finally got an sms from Digital Planet on the 11th stating to confirm my delivery address and someone will call within 24hrs. I rep**** to the sms with the delivery address, I would have called but they did not leave a telephone number in the sms ‘duh’. They did call the following day and I explained I am going away for the weekend and please deliver Monday 15th and also gave the delivery address. They said someone will call again to confirm but I had told them I was away and telling them to deliver Monday was good enough.

Monday comes and I waited in all day and in the evening I went on to the Afrihost client zone to check delivery tracking only to find it had all been canceled by Digital planet. I then sent a message via the mybroadband forum website to Afriman asking why this has happened. I get a reply saying on there side everything is fine and the order is pending, try dealing with Digital planet directly and gave me the contact number. I thought this was bad as I expected Afrihost to follow up and see why this happened, after all it was business for them.

I contacted Digital planet and gave my ID and was told they have canceled the order as they tried contacting me twice. I told him that I said to the person who contacted me that I was away and to deliver Monday. He then went away keeping me on hold for 5 minutes to check this and came back and confirmed that I did say to deliver Monday and that I was away for the weekend and did not know why they canceled the order, I guess he checked the recording of the message.

I thought okay great so you will reinstate the order, he said they could not reinstate the order, after a few choice words from me I told him if it’s your fault and you admit it surely you can reinstate it. He then said he will speak to his supervisor. I put the phone down after about 10 minutes of waiting, the whole call was 20 minutes of which most was waiting. I called back this time getting a name first, Lesego Modise I said I wanted the name of the person who kept me hanging on the phone, she refused saying she could not get it. After explaining again the situation she confirmed they could not reinstate the order and I would have to place the order again with Afrihost.

Normally I would do this and bite my tongue, but the deal with afrihost was not the same, the router I wanted was now R999, they were offering a cheaper one for free but could only handle 30+ connections but I need it for my club of 140 members so the 64 connections the B618 could handle was useful.

My main gripe is the way Afrihost passed me on for me to deal with a B rated company which they chose to supply the router, stating customers get a better response dealing directly with Digital planet – yeah right. I wanted a call from Afrihost to try and help rather than pass me on to Digital Planet, but it looks like those days have gone and customer service is a thing of the passed. Afriman was the best response but then I still did not get a result.