Mweb: where the customer is always wrong

Adding to the long list of other unsatisfied Mweb customers, I have been a fibre customer of Mweb for a few years now and they continue to disappoint. Apart from variable upload & download speeds (contrary to the initial sales pitch given) it is the insanely frustrating way they deal with loss of internet connection when it happens. They sub-contract Frogfoot for the fibre line so I do not have the relationship with Frogfoot, my contract is with Mweb. But when I have connectivity problems from time to time (which have never been caused by a problem my side, always in retrospect a problem with Mweb or Frogfoot) I am treated like a fool by the agent in Mweb's technical call centre, and I have to jump through a whole bunch of hoops (including having to convince them I have not changed anything in my setup, and being made to climb into the complicated wiring behind my desk and swop cables over from routers and change network settings, etc) for them to establish every time where the problem is. Even though I pretty much know from experience the problem is not with me. Every time I get forced into a bunch of complex jargon and technical troubleshooting under their instruction, and in the process I start getting accused of being the problem because maybe I'm on a network, or perhaps on a VPN and shouldn't be, or I must get my computer guy to come in and disable something in my settings ... despite all the other months and years that my un-changed setup has worked perfectly. This can take hours of frustration and downtime with some guy asking questions or making assumptions that he himself clearly does not understand, as I had yesterday, again. Every time it has predictably turned out to be a problem with either Mweb or Frogfoot and accordingly Mweb then have to get in touch with Frogfoot to resolve this. This is what they should do in the first place instead of involving a customer a bunch of questions around an IT-setup that cannot be explained remotely or without being an IT expert! They CAN do this without me ... they just refuse to. They CAN get in touch with Frogfoot to checkout the line/problems, but for some reason they insist on making it my problem and no matter how much explanation I give, they stubbornly stick to the assumption that first and foremost the problem must be with me. How do I know they can establish where the problem is with out me? Because, although he had denied initially that it was possible for them to establish where the problem was without me changing all my wiring and settings to run a test that did not even work and caused chaos and wasted over an hour of my time, I later asked the agent how they would manage this cumbersome process if there was more than one customer calling in with a connection problem ... His answer? "Well then we would know the problem must be with us or with Frogfoot and we would therefore get in touch with them to find where the problem was and take steps to resolve it." And there is the admission of guilt. Mweb takes the view it is better to stuff the customer around for an hour, every time the same problem repeats (rip out his bound-up wiring and swopping plugs/cables in a complicated setup involving an Mweb router, Frogfoot router, other power hubs and VOIP boxes, security camera wiring, other computers in the house, etc) so that Mweb can simply confirm that the problem must be with themselves or Frogfoot. This despite him admitting from the diagnosis near the start of the call that the problem must be with one of them anyway. Yes, better to frustrate the customer beyond belief than to simply contact their sub-contractor and resolve it between them, like they say they would do anyway - but that they would only do it if more than one customer in the general area happens to be trying to get online at the same time as me, and who has the time between work calls and meetings to phone in and wait in a queue to speak to an annoying Mweb technical consultant to report they are down ... only then will they actually take the step of contacting the provider of the fibre line to establish where the issue is rather than making it the customer's problem.

For all of Telkom's faults, I hear that their fibre service actually works quite well and they have quite good service. Makes one think ... just one company to deal with and perhaps avoid all this nonsense.