Stuck forever at the lowest download speed because my speed is hard-coded

This all started with a 3-month free double-speed upgrade in October of 2020. (An upgrade from 10Mbit/s to 20Mbit/s)

After the upgrade took place, my package started showing as 20Mbit/s in ClientZone. However, my speed was still 10Mbit/s. I contacted support, who had me run speed tests on every port on my ONT, with my ethernet cable plugged into the router and with it plugged directly into the ONT. Restarts of the ONT and router were also requested. Nothing helped, so a fault was logged with Vumatel. Vumatel came to my home, ran some tests, and said that the fault was with Afrihost. They assured me that they would notify Afihost of this finding, but I never heard from Afrihost about the issue again. I let it go, since it was a free temporary upgrade, so I wasn't wasting any money. Fun fact: I discovered that the issue does lie with Afrihost, because I was able to get 20Mbit/s speeds when connected to my work's VPN.

In December I had some free time, so I decided to see if I could make use of the remaining month of free double-speed. So I contacted Afrihost again, this time with a phone call. Once again, the support person had me spend an entire afternoon running speed tests with all possible configurations. Nothing helped, so a fault was logged with Vumatel. Pointing out that the problem was not with Vumatel based on what I knew so far, fell on deaf ears. I received an SMS from Vumatel saying they would look into the matter shortly. I never heard back from them or Afrihost again. So, I went ahead and dropped my subscription back to 10Mbit/s in ClientZone and left it at that.

Fast forward to late June this year, when I received an email from Afrihost saying that I will be upgraded permanently to 20Mbit/s from the 1st of July. On the 1st of July I receive an SMS from Afrihost saying that there would be a 48 hour delay in my upgrade. By the 6th of July, my speed was still at 10Mbit/s, even though the package is now showing as 20Mbit/s in ClientZone. So I decided to send an email to Afrihost. The response was once again some recommendations about restarting everything, so I knew email correspondence would be a waste of time. (I performed the restarts in any case, just to make sure ... it resolved nothing.) So I decided to phone them the next day.

On the 7th of July, I spoke on the phone to "Johnson S", and I told him the entire story thus far. He then yet again logged a ticket with Vumatel, forwarding it to me via email. I pointed out that it was highly probable that Vumatel would just close the ticket. He said that I should wait 24 hours, and if I didn't hear from Vumatel, I should contact him again. He would then ask his manager to contact Vumatel. It is now the next day (8th of July) and I have heard nothing from Vumatel. I responded to Johnson's email, informing him of this. No response from Johnson.

I anticipated Johnson to ignore all subsequent emails from me, so I decided to phone Afrihost again. Someone else picked up the phone this time, so I had to explain that I was following up on the ticket open with Johnson S. This person told me that Vumatel had closed the ticket on their side. Yet, my speed is still 10Mbit/s, so I asked the person if we could now escalate to Johnson's line manager. The person I spoke to had no interest in escalating to anyone's manager, and wanted me to reboot stuff again instead. After objecting to this, the person promised to phone Vumatel again, and to then phone me back on the same day (8th of July). This never happened.

So, I am stuck in a loop with Afrihost where the problem can never be fixed: Contact support, go through troubleshooting steps, log a ticket with Vumatel, Vumatel closes it because Afrihost is at fault. (I suspect Afrihost has my speed hard-coded somewhere to 10Mbit/s) If I ever want to be able to get faster fibre speeds I will have to go to another ISP.