Worst service I've ever received

Afrihost I wish I didn't have to write this review. I have been a firm afrihost customer and champion for the last 5 years - now I will never recommend them again, and will take my business elsewhere as soon as humanly possible.

I recently (beginning of this year) decided to switch from ADSL to fibre. I was with Telkom and afrihost provided my data, and wanted to leave Telkom and give afrihost my full support as (up until now) I had only experienced wonderful service. I successfully cancelled my Telkom account and had a connection fibre activated (fibre had already been installed by Vuma throughout my entire complex).

Then last month, my partner and I found a great deal bigger unit in our same complex, and decided to move house. The new house had fibre installed and running (also with Vuma, as mentioned above), and I thought to move my account would be a simple process - boy was I wrong.

I contacted afrihost to let them know that I would be changing address and would like to port my connection - only to be told that Afrihost does not do this. What? You have an account with afrihost smf you're intending to stay with them as a service provider, but you can't change port your connection when you move? This, for Afrihost's flagship product; at a time when, in a market traditionally traditionally dominated by Telkom and their notoriously bad service, Afrihost have the opportunity to stand out from their competitors as the premier fibre provider? But that's not the worst part.

After being told that, no, I couldn't port, I was told that instead I would have to activate a new connection. Simple enough, right? I wish. I was told to cancel my previous account as soon as I was ready but before the 24th, and they would activate the new account. As fibre was already installed and live, all that would need to happen was for afrihost to activate the connection in my name and it would be running immediately - no technician would need to come in, no installation, just pressing a button on a keyboard. THATS ALL I WAS TOLD. This will be important later.

I cancelled the accouny and began using the new connection for the last few days of April. Then at 9pm on the last day of the month, I received a bill from afrihost - FOR R3000!

I thought this must be some kind of mistake. I contacted one of the 2 or 3 agents I had spoken to at that point regarding moving house and setting up a new connection, and asked what this was all about. He told me that, as per their Ts and Cs, any contract that is cancelled within 18 months of activation can be charged a cancellation fee to cover the cost of installation.

'But why wasn't this mentioned to me before now? Why did someone not say it to me when I specifically asked about porting my account?' No response, except to say: 'With regards to the cancellation fee and it being moved over to the new coverage costs , you can determine it by taking the amount we covered you for on the new installation which is R2,006.77 . If we add that to what the current cancellation fee's are and get a total anything that is over R4000.00 will be payable'

'What does that mean? My first installation amount was R2700, and the second was R2000... Does that mean I only pay R700?' No response, so i called an agent. Not only did he not even know that you couldn't port a connection across, but he couldn't even tell me what I owed. The only thing he told me was that the R3000 bill INCLUDES my monthly payment for line rental and internet - about R570. Well, that's some mercy, I thought.

But lo and behold, a few days later, 2 amounts were deducted from my *** and R670. So not only did the first huge bill NOT include the monthly payment for May, it didn't even include the pro rata amount for April.

So in summary, not only does Afrihost not allow paying, long-time customers to port their fibe connection when they move, but they also completely failed to tell me that they would be billing me thousands of rands due to that inability on their part! If I HAD known I could have made a plan with my previous landlady to manage the connection until I could get Afrihost to lower the ridiculously high bill or at least budget for the amount.

I hope that Afrihost can fix this issue, or else I will have to take it further.