WebAfrica: A Masterclass in Organised Chaos

Buckle up buttercups - its going to be a bumpy ride

Sorry its a long one and I've written a review before but there have been some updates since - so here is a comprehensive review

So anyway, let me tell you a little story. A story about hope, betrayal, and a WhatsApp chat that will haunt my dreams.

It started simply enough. I moved house. WebAfrica, bless them, advertises a service where they move your connection with you. Lovely. Except when I asked them to do exactly that, I was told — with what I can only imagine was a straight face — that this isn't actually possible. I would need to cancel and place a brand new order, complete with a new connection fee and startup costs, on top of my monthly. So the "move your connection" service is more of a vibe than a commitment. Duely noted.

Fine. I placed the new order. It took three weeks — February 7th to around the 24th — to get my new place connected. Three weeks. I've seen glaciers move with more urgency. In the meantime, I cancelled the old address connection so I wouldn't be billed for two lines. You can probably see where this is going.

Debit order day arrives and I am charged more than double my monthly amount. Two connections. Both on my name. One of which I had cancelled, was not using, and was not living at. WebAfrica, unbothered, simply debited me for both. When I queried this and asked them to cancel the redundant one, I received confirmation that it had been sorted. Everything was fine! I was naive enough to believe them.

March 31st. Debit order goes off as normal. WebAfrica, for the uninitiated, takes your money at the start of the month and then provides the service — so I paid, the money left my account, we were square. April 9th rolls around and my internet is cancelled. No warning. No explanation. No email. Nothing. Just: gone. I work from home. So this wasn't an inconvenience — this was my income, evaporating.

I reached out to find out what on earth had happened. What followed was one of the most extraordinary customer service experiences of my life, and I say that as someone who once spent 45 minutes on hold with a government department. Their WhatsApp chat — the only meaningful way to reach them — operates on a system where you wait hours for an agent, receive one sentence of information, get transferred to another department, wait hours again, receive another sentence, and then — inevitably — the chat times out because the agent has gone walkabout, and you start from the absolute beginning with a new agent who cannot see your previous conversation because the last agent never gave you a ticket number. Rinse. Repeat. Weep.

I was told, repeatedly, that my matter had been escalated. To this manager. To that brand owner. Very important people, allegedly. When I asked to actually speak to one of these mysterious escalation recipients — you know, someone who might have an answer — I was told no. I could only speak to the agents. The same agents who were escalating things to people I was not permitted to contact. It's a closed loop of incompetence and I genuinely think it might be load-shedding for accountability.

April 13th. Still no internet. Still no explanation. But new information arises: I now need to pay an additional R575 for them to reconnect me. For a service I had already paid for. That they had cancelled. For reasons no one could explain.

Today is April 15th. After not once hearing back from Webafrica or from any of the numerous escalations. I have cancelled everything at the suggestion of friends and family — every connection, every order, every fragile thread of hope I had in this company — and signed up with a new, more reputable and better rated ISP. And WebAfrica, true to form, has one final trick up their sleeve: they are holding my line through Frogfoot. Apparently this is something they can do — legally, apparently — for up to a month. My new ISP has estimated I'll be back online by May 3rd.

May. Third.

I've been without internet since April 9th. I work from home. That's not an inconvenience, that's a hostage situation — and WebAfrica will do (and have done) nothing about it.

If you are considering WebAfrica as your ISP: please. I'm begging you. Go literally anywhere else. Sign up with someone, anyone, who treats service cancellations as something to be explained, who has a support system that doesn't functionally reset every hour, and who does not — when all else fails — hold your line hostage out of what I can only describe as spite.

Screenshots available upon request. I have many.

Yours Kindly ****ed Off (I'd give zero stars if it were possible)