Random outages / Poor Network / Terrible Technical Support / Most expensive product compafred to other providers

I have had a fiber package through Vumatel/Afrihost for 3 years.

I have a 20mbps line (Its supposed to be 50mbps during lockdown) line.

I have had Network issues Since 26/5/2020. Massive speed drops and inability to perform work and schooling from home. With no activity on local network, Ive done speed test and got about 7mbps.

I have dropped VOIP calls within meetings (MS teams/Zoom). I am unable to to stream a single instance of Netflix after 20:00. I have run speed checks and get mixed results throughout the day.

Vumatel hides behind their Afrihost 1st line support - who essentially just get you to switch your router on and off again. They have reset the address from their side before for temporary fix.

I have logged issues via Afrihost (my billing runs through them). The communcation via whatsapp is laughable.

My first Fault was logged at 16:56, last week. My first response was a phone call at 21:57. He reset my connection from his side. Spped was restored. I queried line costs, He blamed Vumatel for cost of package.

I then had network issues 2 days later. They just told me to restart CTE and router. Then explained that I must activate my afrihost line. They were assuming that I had not done so since purchasing the line. I queried these steps. I comp**** with the changes. My speed was halved for the next day. I later spoke to a "manager" who accused me of not activating my line previoulsy. I explained that I had activated it June 2017. He accused me of lying. I requested that he confirm the dates that the router was activated. He said 2018. He was adament. (Still not sure why I would re activate now??) It was at this point I realized that he was deflecting and deferring the issue. I pushed him to confirm the full date. He later conceded that I had in fact activated the line in June 2017. We esculated the issue further to Vumatel.

2 days later My line goes dead. the neighborhood is out. I log a further call with Afrihost. Response is 3 hours later. By this point the line is back up again (It was down for 2 hours)

The afrihost technician is unable to to determine the issue. He wants me to restart my CTE again... I have already said its back up. This is now a repeated issue... I ask for feedback on previous escalation.

I explain what has happened (they can of course follow history on Whatsapp)

They will not provide feedback until I restart CTE and router.

Vumatel had now (after 48 hours) instructs Afrihost to use a different speed test (apparently hosted on the shop.vumatel website). There is no test on the link.

We had an outage from 14:00 - 16:00 today and neither Vumatel / Afrihost are able to provide any information about this...

It's a *** network, they have positioned themselves to be the only provider in the area - and are officially the most expensive provider.

Very interesting that they can charge people rates based on suburbs.... apparently Its ok to charge residents less in Century City (R727 20mbps uncapped), Even less in Soweto (R399 20mbps uncapped) compared to the new increased price in Durbanville and Bellville (R907 20mbps uncapped).