********* business practices

My company has been a loyal client of WiruLink (Pty) Ltd. since March 2019. During this period I have been very satisfied with the service rendered and not experienced any major issues until our Internet services malfunctioned on Sunday 27/10/2024. The issues were reported to WiruLink (Pty) Ltd. on Monday morning 28/10/2024 after we conducted a thorough investigation of our IT infrastructure to ascertain the source of the problems - namely failure of our On-Premises Exchange Server to deliver outbound email and complete lack of access to certain Web portals. I telephonically discussed the issue with WiruLink (Pty) Ltd.'s technical support and clearly explained the issue in detail (Since phone calls are recorded I would suggest they take a listen to my phone call to verify the facts being presented here) and they advised they would investigate further as they could not see any faults / issues from their side. On Monday afternoon they reverted back to me via email and advised that the there was no fault with our Internet connection and that I needed to investigate our Exchange Server which was "defective". This irritated me because I spent a fair amount of time explaining the issues experienced when I called them telephonically earlier in the day but fortunately we also run a Fai***** Internet Connection in the form of an LTE connection and disabled Wirulink's Internet connection to force a fai***** on our Firewall. As soon as our Firewall failed over to the LTE connection all the issues experienced were immediately resolved proving beyond any reasonable doubt that the fault was indeed on Wirulink's side. Screen shots were taken of this evidence and emailed to Wirulink and then when we restored their Internet connection the very same issues recurred. After presenting them with irrefutable evidence they reverted back to me on Tuesday 29/10/2024 and then agreed that they could see the problems we were experiencing, but they did not know the cause. It was then agreed that the Static IP address assigned to our domain would be modified to see if this would resolve the problem, Wirulink duefully modified our Static IP address and immediately the issues were fully resolved which vindicates myself & my company in that I already told them on the Monday that the problem had nothing to do with our IT infrastructure and everything to do with their systems, despite them claiming our Exchange Server was "defective".

I was very happy the services had been fully restored until I received our monthly billing on Wednesday 30/10/2024. I noted that they had now included an additional billing line in the form of "Static IP Address (single IP)" in the amount of R 100.00 EX. VAT. I immediately emailed the accounts department and queried this additional charge and after not receiving a prompt response, I telephoned the accounts department and queried the charge as our product package from WiruLink INCLUDES 1 x Static IP Address and was struggling to understand how we can be billed for something we already paying for as part of the total package costs. I was then advised they would discuss with the technical support personal and revert back to me. Later in the day I received an email from technical support and they confirmed that the billing was indeed correct and that we must now pay for an additional Static IP Address - in other words according to WiruLink we indeed receive a single Static IP Address as part of the monthly billing package, but because they assigned a new Static IP Address we are now "using" two (2) Static IP address's and it is 100% correct that we must be billed for the second address. Furthermore to add insult to injury they claimed they are not liable for an IP Address that has been Blacklisted as the address is of "no use to them" (To directly quote them) and they had no alternative but to issue a new IP address for which I as the client am liable to pay for. This is where I now have a serious issue, because:

1. When I brought the issue to their attention there was NEVER any mention of our Static IP Address being Blacklisted. 2. I took the liberty of checking myself to see if that IP Address was Blacklisted and all the checks I conducted claim the address is not on any Blacklists. 3. I requested them to furnish me with Evidence of a Blacklisting for which I have received zero response thus far. 4. I don't dispute the fact that IP Address's can and do end up on Blacklists, however according to Wirulink once and IP Address ends up on a Blacklist it becomes useless and there is no means to have it removed which anyone with a basic knowledge of IT knows is complete nonsense as a mechanism is always provided to request removal from a Blacklist which renders their argument null & void. 5. I then asked them if this issue re-occurs in the future and they have to assign my company a new Static IP Address will I then have to pay for this, for which they confirmed this indeed will be case, so assuming we run into this problem another 10 times, they will increase our monthly billing by R 1,000.00 EX. VAT (R 100.00 x 10) because each time they change the Static IP Address the previous Static IP address which they claim is "Compromised" is of "No use to them".

Based on these points I take serious umbrage as the way I see it, we are paying for a service on a monthly basis and what WiruLink can't seem to appreciate is the simple fact that in accordance with the Consumer Protection Act (CPA) they are obligated by law to render a working service. They are 100% liable to ensure the service is fully functional and since we are not receiving these services pro-bono, regardless of what the cause of the fault is, provided it has nothing to do with our infrastructure they have to make good at their sole expense. Since they still have zero explanation for the cause of our problems and falsely claim the IP Address was "Blacklisted" I find it highly ********* for them to bill me for a new Static IP Address. If the previous IP Address is indeed 'Compromised' then that is not my problem as they need to take it up with their "Supplier of IP Address's" and can't expect the customer to pay for a defective IP Address.

I have pointed this out to them and requested that senior management engage with me on this issue to reach a resolution as I find it ridiculous that we as a long standing client have to pay for failures on their network - especially when they still can't explain the cause of the problem and falsely claim we are at fault because the "IP Address is Blacklisted" and fail to provide any evidence whatsoever.

I am still waiting for Senior Management to reach out to me as it would appear my email to them sent earlier today was ignored which I deem to be rude and unprofessional. I would like to amicably resolve this dispute and am now awaiting feedback from WiruLink as I am not paying extra money out of principal for something that is already included in our monthly billing costs as they are legally obligated in accordance with the CPA to provide us with a fully working product / service.