Ransom to No Service

I agreed to signup with Afrihost in November of 2017, with the understanding that when Fibre has gone live in my area, that they would then come draw in the line and become my preferred ISP host. Afrihost has since delivered a wifi router to me that has been sitting at my house un-used as i do have a router that i am using from current ISP provider

I called in Afrihost in January of 2018 to find out if Octotel has gone live in my neighbourhood, the technical person remarked "Octotel does always tell the truth" - paraphrasing; The person that assisted me was kind enough to put me on hold and call Octotel and for the next 40 minutes that i was on hold, i quickly googled and found that Octotel has gone live in my area that month.... i eventually dropped the call

Its is now March of 2018 and not once has Afrihost made contact with me to follow up on my call or to tell me Octotel has gone live and make arrangements to come pull the fibre line in. Attempting to call Afrihost is a mission on itself as they call center line is always very busy and have to hold to speak to a Representative (i pray not for the same service delivery i am receiving)

I called today and spoke to a lady called Leratto in the call center, she was as helpful as she could be considering that i am now an irritated "potential" client. I explained i am not happy with the service provided (Well No Service At All Actually) and would like to cancel this order with them and they could come fetch their router which has never been used and still sitting as it arrived.

To which she promptly responded "Its fine sir, but we will charge you a R1000"

So Afrihost wants to bill me a R1000 before trying to collect their router, under the guise that they will refund it once it is received.... you have not even provided me a service that you promised you would do when i signed up in the first place..... and now would like me to believe that they will refund me when they have collected (whenever that is)

If Afrihost had shown up, collected their router and said it was broken or used or whatever the case may be.... then by all means charge me.... that may be fair.... but to hold me ransom to your service kind people of Afrihost... that is ******ion! Upon probing the notes on my account with Afrihost found that no notes have been entered of a previous call... very convenient for Afrihost (No Record of Your Call Sir :) )