Think twice about using Home-Connect

Signed up to Home-Connect in 2020, happily obligating to the debit order and the amount for a 20/20 line which automatically upgraded to 50/50 a year later for the same price. Thought 'Wow, great service' until debit orders weren't taken off as per the norm and penalty fees suddenly arose from them not taking off the debit orders. Phoning Home-Connect and asking why the penalty fee was there when clearly no debit order was taken off was clearly explained and the penalty fee dropped due to an error on their side because the finance department could not be contacted. I don't know if it was because they were short-staffed or finance could not be bothered but let's say hypothetically it was a bit of both. Getting hold of finance was a mission, waiting an hour to speak to someone from the finance department just to send proof of payment of the R880-00 that had to get paid manually as opposed to a debit order. 2 months go by with the same issue of not taking the debit order off on the 1st a year after using their services and we decided to cancel in January 2022 while paying 880-00 and ignoring the 'penalty fee' like we were advised to. Trying to cancel with Home-Connect is a nightmare. We canceled this year 2022 in January and we are still getting billed for an additional 3 months using the service and router rental!! Totalling R2640 and an R700-00 router rental?! Whaaaaaat? The legal service told us that if we do not pay the outstanding amount, we are going to court. After investigating how many times we contacted Home-Connected, enquired about the extra 3 months of service use after canceling and the additional 700-00 for router rental, they arrange for the router to get picked up by The Courier Guy and the 700-00 to be expunged from the still outstanding balance of 3 months in which we kindly reminded them that we had canceled in January 2022 in which we owe them the merger 880-00 for their service. We are in June now and they had the audacity to ask where the router is since they have not received it yet when it was picked up in May 2022. "We will further investigate," they say knowing that they put a Debt Recovery on our head for 3 months of service we did not use on top of router rental that never came up in any conversation we had with finance telephonically. The point is this: you may have them taking off their amount every month, don't get comfortable because one month that debit order will not go off and you WILL pay a penalty fee because you'll have to do it manually. Secondly, don't expect the same person from finance to speak to you. They will have a completely different way of handling the situation than the previous person from finance. Always ask them if you are supposed to be paying router rental. If they put Debt Recovery on you, send Debt recovery EVERY interaction you have had with home connect, the names, the dates, the full emails, and perhaps even recorded phone conversations. I will leave it at that and give Home-Connect some advice. Hire competent people. Keep tabs on your clients. If a client complains 3 times in a row that the debit order did not go off, there's something wrong- get to the bottom of it. 2 years with Home-Connect thinking about how amazing they are and we leave because they made us disgruntled and unhappy. NEVER using this service provider again. Not after everything they put us through.