Shocking FTTB Service

I signed my company up for a capped 100Mb/s Vox Fibre-to-the-Business (FTTB) package in July of 2017 after an extensive scoping exercise with the assigned sales agent regarding our requirements.

To begin with, even though there was already fibre infrastructure at our business premises and I was told that this would expedite the installation process, after many missed appointments, mix-ups, incorrect call-outs and disappearing project managers, the installation was eventually completed at the end of September. But that's when the real problems began.

Firstly, Vox unilaterally, and without so much as informing me, decided not to activate our bundled VOIP service, because management determined that our network infrastructure didn't meet their (undocumented) requirements. This despite the fact that their own engineer who attended on-site to do a survey and needs analysis confirmed that we had everything in place to support the VOIP service (and signed off the relevant paperwork to that effect).

Eventually, after many, many phone calls and back-and-forth e-mails, and with the purchase of additional network equipment, our VOIP service was activated at the end of November. This represents a full *four months* from the date we signed up for the FTTB service. However, despite not having received the service we subscribed for in all that time, this did not stop Vox from billing us for the full amount of the subscription. In addition, since we were not able to cancel our Telkom switchboard lines, we incurred significant unnecessary costs on line rental during this period as well.

The problems, however, did not stop there, as it quickly became apparent that material aspects of the service (unmetered after-hours usage and data-rol*****) which were discussed at length with the sales agent and which induced us to order the package that we did, were not as promised. This resulted in our connection being prematurely capped multiple times, forcing us to revert to our legacy ADSL connection. Still, Vox continued to charge us in full, including for additional data boosters that we were forced to buy.

In light of everything, our account manager eventually suggested a compromise whereby we could migrate to a much slower but uncapped FTTB service. However, this would come with a once-off cost for reprovisioning our VOIP service, even though the system had been completely set up by this point and no on-site call-out would be needed.

Eventually, our account manager committed to passing us a credit for the two months for which we were forced to pay Vox in full and Telkom in full, despite not having received the full service (including VOIP facility) that we subscribed for. This now took us into the new year and, apparently, new management at Vox who promptly declined to authorise the credit we were promised with no explanation given.

Our experience in this regard has been shocking from start to finish and I have rarely in my life experienced such incompetence from a management perspective and such disgracefully bad customer service. At no point has anyone from Vox apologised for any of the numerous inconveniences we have suffered nor have our endless problems ever been escalated to a level where they could be addressed. In essence, Vox's attitude has been, and remains, that the customer is always wrong and their internal policies are inviolable.

Despite many years of good experience as a home and business ADSL subscriber with Vox, I cannot caution anyone strongly enough to stay away from Vox when it comes to fibre. And looking at the other reviews on here, we are clearly not the only ones to have experienced terrible service from Vox. There are so many other decent service providers out there, it just isn't worth the anguish.