Here at SlickTiger Industries we care deeply about YOU the consumer and want to provide an open and honest forum to celebrate excellent customer service because let’s face it, in South Africa it hardly EVER happens.
I had my doubts when I started this category on the site. We get nailed in the ass so frequently when it comes to customer service, I’d get way more mileage if I changed this to a forum for bitching and moaning.
But that just ain’t my style. Celebrate the positive, give praise where it’s due. Hold hands. Sing Kum Ba Ya, and if you’re looking for an internet service provider don’t even hesitate, go for Afrihost.
We started using Afrihost last year in November because the 3G mobile data we had been using through Nashua Mobile was so over-priced, slow and notoriously unreliable that it was driving us nuts [WARNING: Gratuitous bitching and moaning to follow].
I mean holy shit, we were paying something like R290 a month for (wait for it) 1.5GB of claw-your-face-off slow data. What a total load of shit. And most months we’d end up going over the cap and then heaven help you pal, cause you will get drilled so hard in the gat you won’t be able to walk straight for a week.
Because here’s the really fucked up thing. When I was with Nashua Mobile / Vodacom, if I wanted to check my data I’d either have to keep an eye out for these crappy smses that were sent to my 3G SIM card notifying me of my data usage (which I ALWAYS forgot to check) or I’d have to log on to Vodacom’s site to check it (which I was terminally useless at remembering the password for).
One month I let things slide for a week without checking only to find that I’d overshot my cap by almost 500MB. Boy did I pay for that mistake – one thousand two hundred South African Ront for having used a grand total of about 2GB. Eina.
It’s a fucking joke. You know how much you pay for 10GB of mobile data with Vodacom? One thousand six hundred Ront! (According to this link on Vodacom’s site).
Sorry, I’m getting a little worked up here. Reign it back in there Slick, easy Tiger.
Anyway, I was sick of getting shtoomped in the pooper so I decided to do a little digging to sort out an ADSL line in the flat and Afrihost came highly recommended by a lot of the people I spoke with.
Price-wise their offering may not have been the cheapest on the market (at the time I think Axxess had a slightly cheaper offering) but it came pretty damn close.
I’d worked out that if I wanted to go uncapped with a 4Mbps line I was gonna fork out just over R1k a month.
This price changed drastically if I went for a slower line speed, but after the aforementioned face-clawingly-slow speeds I’d experienced some nights on 3G, I wanted the fastest internet money could buy. Also, I’ don’t consume massive amounts of data, so I went for a 15GB capped 4 / 10Mbps line.
All-in, my ADSL costs me Five hundred and eighty South African Ront every month. And as for speeds, I’m lucky enough to be in an area where I’m connected to a 10Mbps line so I’ve clocked download speeds as fast as 8.26Mbps on www.speedtest.net before. Compare that to the 0.81Mbps speed I was getting on 3G and you can imagine the ear-to-ear grin I get when using the internet now.
But here’s the rub – not only did Afrihost sort out EVERYTHING when it came to getting Telkom guys in to install the line and transferring the line so I pay line rental directly to Afrihost every month, but they kept me informed of their progress every step of the way with emails and smses.
In total it took me a month before I was up and running (the big hold up came from Telkom’s side who really dragged their feet when transferring my line to Afrihost).
If my line gives me any trouble, I can call Afrihost up until midnight and they’ll sort it out. Typically this is a case of about 30mins tops and I’m back up and running. I’m also notified as my data usage hits 50%, 75% and 90% by sms and email and when I hit my cap I don’t get drilled with out of bundle rates, my data just stops.
If I want more data (at a rate of something like R26 a gig), I just reply to the sms I get when my data runs dry with a number and that’s how many GBs they’ll top me up with.
And best of all, once in awhile, Afrihost decides to be flippin awesome and just sommer give you shitloads of free bandwidth!
In Feb they sent an email saying “Hi Tony, we love the shit out of you. Here, click this link and dig some free bandwidth.†I was a little sceptical but decided to give it a go. After clicking the link a roller appeared on my screen and all these numbers started whirring past until it eventually came to rest on 35%.
Next thing I know, my phone beeps with an sms from Afrihost saying “Congrats, here’s an extra 5GB on your cap, no strings attached. Enjoy!â€
After paying retarded amounts for data, 5GB free just for being a customer was pretty damn sweet.
Get this though, a shitload of their customers apparently complained about this because it only came through during the last week of Feb, so they couldn’t use their free data in time! What a bunch of ungrateful douchebags!
So Afrihost upped the ante and come the first week of March, sent another email apologising for giving us all that rad free data so late in the month and offering to give us MORE free data to make it better!
This time around I clicked the link and almost fell off my chair.
How the fuck is this for amazing:
With one click my cap went from 15GBs to something like 48GBs! It was retarded! I still had 6GB left at the end of the month, wa-hoo!
Then, at the beginning of this month they send another email saying that for May, June and July they are going to double all our caps just because they love us.
I’ll admit, all the love was getting a little creepy at this point, but whatever DOUBLE MY CAP for the next three months just because I gave them my business? By South African standards that’s basically unheard of.
I can say with 100% certainty that if you’re in the market for insane broadband, you’d be pretty dof not to consider Afrihost and no, they did not pay / bribe me to write this post, I just did it because Afrihost are badass.
End. Van. Storie.
-ST
