MH
Martin H
Active since Sep 2014
11
Reviews
0
Industries
Reviews
11 reviews1 month ago
Appalling lack of customer technical support
About 6 weeks ago my VOIP handset broke and so I got a new one. I went to my account online to find the access settings for 56524804 (number 27877014915) and I set it up and it showed as “Registered”. But it did not work at all. It could not make or receive any calls. Thus began the total nightmare of trying to get tech support from Mweb over the next 6 weeks. I tried to phone 0877000777 and held on listening to the same music and messages for over an hour until the line just dropped. This turned out to absolutely typical. I then tried the chat system and it was just as bad. I made my selections and explained the problem and then waited at least 5 hours for someone to respond. When someone finally did come onto the chat, I did not see because I was busy with something else at that moment, not sitting staring at the actual chat screen for 5 hours. I only noticed about 5 minutes later that someone had finally responded and by that stage the agent had just closed the chat without even bothering to read what I had written above! I had exactly the same experience several times more but finally got hold of someone and was given a reference number 302517. After a couple of weeks of waiting, I received an SMS to say that their reference number had been closed! It was closed without anyone ever getting back to me or fixing anything! Knowing that it was impossible to get a hold of anyone on the phone I went through the same process on the chat of waiting 4 or 5 hours at a time to try and have the luck of catching somebody on the chat at the exact time that they finally responded. Every time I did write the full problem into the chat in advance and every time the agent completely ignored it and just closed the chat if I wasn't sitting there at the exact moment. Eventually I finally got hold of a Support agent on the chat and all he did was tell me that he did not know how to fix a VOIP and I needed to call 0877000777!! It then took me at least 10 further messages to convince him that this number never gets answered for me and I kept saying why can't he send them an email and get them to call me. He honestly could not be bothered to do this until I continually harassed him over the chat. (You can check the transcript to see just how little support this agent offered). At last he agreed to do it and gave me reference MWB33811376. I then waited a few more weeks until yesterday with absolutely no response from MWeb yet again. Yesterday I wasted 90 minutes hours waiting on 0877000777 after selecting 3 for VOIP support (being told constantly that I was number 1 in the queue!!!) until I had to give up and hang up because I was running out of the VOIP minutes allocated to my other phone 57760760 (27877028272). So I tried calling sales, hoping that I might get to speak to a human being. The sales lady then tried to help me by calling me back on my cell phone and then said she would put me through VOIP support, but of course all that happened is I went back into the same queue where I was "first in line" and that went on for another 30 minutes until the line dropped. Today I tried again to contact Support via Sales (for existing customers) but after about 10 mins of being “first in line” the line just dropped. So I called again and waited almost 30 mins and then finally got through to a human being. So then I began to explain the problem yet again and to ask the lady to help me to actually get in contact with tech support by phoning them herself like the other lady had done the previous day. While I was still explaining this to her, the line went completely dead! Why? Because my VOIP line 57760760 (27877028272 added insult to injury - it had finally run out of its entire 150 minutes allocated for the month - all of it WASTED in trying to contact Mweb technical support!!! Of course this lady didn't think to call me back on my cell phone which she knew very well because that is how she had accessed to my account - appalling and uncaring service yet again from her. I then had a brainwave: clearly, Mweb does not care at all about its existing customers enough to staff the existing customer sales upgrades line any more than they do the technical support lines, but maybe they do have staff allocated to hooking brand-new customers who will be completely unsuspecting about the terrible service they will get once they pay. This idea turned out to be correct! By pretending to be a new customer, I got through to a human being almost immediately (using my cellphone since all 150 VOIP minutes already wasted). Luckily, this lady turned out to be the best staff member you've actually got and she phoned me back on my cell phone and then put me in a queue to speak to technical support. After about another 15 minutes, a technical person answered the phone, but they were not a VOIP specialist so instead they logged a call back for me and I was surprised to discover that about 4 hours later somebody did actually phone me and sort out the problem with the non-working VOIP line. So all in all, I have wasted nearly an entire day of my time plus HUGE frustration trying to get a simple Support with a VOIP set up. I have been charged for the entire month of VOIP service that did not work at all, plus I have paid for an entire month of VOIP service on the other phone only to be unable to use it at all because it has all been wasted on trying in vain to contact Mweb Support. By my reckoning, you owe me at least two months worth of VOIP service fees, as well as an apology for wasting so much of my time. Here is what you need to do to improve your service: 1) Hire more people to work on the Tech Support phone lines and on the Chat system to reduce waiting times from 5 hours to something more acceptable like 5 minutes. (Do you even measure the wait times? Do you even care?) 2) Use a proper call queuing system that does not lie to people about being 1st in a queue but rather tells them the estimated waiting time so they can decide if they can afford to wait. 3) Setup the chat system so that its makes a sound when an agent finally answers - this would alert the customer that there is finally someone on the line. You cannot expect anyone to sit actually staring at the chat screen for 4 or 5 hours hoping to see an answer!! 4) Train your chat system staff to actually read what is in the chat above, especially in cases where the customer is no longer “live" at that very moment. Right now, they just abandon the chat without trying to do anything to help!! Because of this issue and the lack of a sound (3 above) it took me an average of 4 attempts to ever get any response from the chat and in each case the average wait time was about 4 hours! 5) Don't tell lies on the recorded messages on the phone. The VOIP support queue keeps saying that there are troubleshooting instructions etc on the website. This is totally untrue. All that is offered are the basic instructions for setting up a Yealink Phone. No instructions are given for any other models of VOIP phones. So you can try to work out how to do it using the Access Details section of your account, but if you get it wrong, there is no help at all. And the Access Details section is very misleading because it shows "Product Username: 56524804 as Username to access VoIP platform”. But actually, this number is not used at all in the phone settings to get VOIP to work. Instead, you are supposed to put the phone number into every field except for the password field. If it were not for this misleading instruction, I would not have had a problem in the first place and would never have been through the torture of trying to get technical support from Mweb. The agent who finally helped me said I could write all of the above info to complaints@mweb.com which I did only to find that it comes back as un-deliverable!! If there is anyone at Mweb who actually cares about customer service, then I would appreciate a detailed response to all of the points above and some real attempt at improving your awful service. If look here HelloPeter.com you will see that your service rating from 2,130 customers over the last 12 months averages 1 out of 5. For any normal corporate, this would be considered an absolute crisis!
53 replies
3 months ago
Lost over R4800 worth of Voyager miles here and support is appalling
Be warned, Avo is a hopeless waste of your valuable time. I redeemed 121,850 Voyager miles on their site 5 days ago and these were instantly debited from my SAA Voyager account. But on the other side, I've received absolutely nothing in terms of Avo points which are supposed to be worth R4,874. It is impossible to reach them on the phone number advertised 0860 100 833 - they just have a recorded message that tells you to use their chatbot or email "to experience the world class service" - what a joke!! Messages to the chat are never answered. There is basically ZERO support. I even tried calling their business support number 0860 910 400 in the hope of reaching a human who could do something. But all I got was the same cheesy hold music repeated for 40 minutes and no one ever answering the call! Eventually I got a response from their email support with lots of excuses about technical/network issues but NO points credited to my account and no commitment of WHEN this might happen. I responded to ask them to just credit my account manually in the meantime so I can complete my purchase and then they can always reverse it if the original transaction is ever completed. Of course I got no further response at all. These guys are just experts at passing on their internal problems to customers - no concept of customer service at all.
0 replies
17 months ago
System glitch but excellent commitment to sort it out
This business has experienced some service challenges due to high voIumes and various kinds of attempted ***** by buyers, but rest assured that they do seem very committed to making sure that every customer is finally happy. I know this because I received a personal phone call to sort out an unusual issue with my order. In my case, I suffered from a system glitch that I probably caused. I got distracted halfway thru placing an order to buy a phone and when I came back to it the next day the payment screen would not load, so I closed it and started my order again and paid successfully. But I then got an error on screen saying that the phone was already allocated to another order (actually my own previous order). However, I still received an email confirming my order and saying shipment info would follow. Due to this contradiction, I tried to call customer service several times but could never get thru (apparently this is due to very high volumes) so I sent an email to their service address explaining the issue. The next morning, instead of just an email response, I received a personal phone call from the very helpful Emma explaining that they had consolidated my two orders and were about to ship the phone. She also explained that they are busy with major system upgrades for Black Friday so hopefully what happened to me won't happen again. It might be difficult to reach them on the phone, but rest assured they will sort out any issues that you might experience.
0 replies
29 months ago
Takealot "6 month guarantee" is a worthless ****
I bought a product "Lightning to Ethernet Adapter (2 in 1 RJ45 Ethernet LAN Network Adapter)" Turned out to appallingly bad quality. Total waste of R300. On about the 15th use (about 6 weeks after I received it), the lightening plug just came apart on trying to remove it from the ipad slot, leaving the metal piece inside the slot so that it had to be removed with pliers. The advertised "6 month guarantee" from the supplier and from Takealot turns out to be worth absolutely zero. They refuse to replace it or refund me. They dare to claim that this obvious manufacturing quality fault is "user damage". (This would be like buying a car and on the 15th time you drive it in an ordinary manner the steering wheel comes off in your hand, then the dealer says it is "user damage"!). Takealot have ignored my 3x repeated requests for a written explanation or conversation with a human to explain how or why they are blaming me for this. Instead of refunding me, they add insult to injury by twice spending money on a courier to return the useless piece of junk back to me! (I refused to sign for it and sent it back again so they can throw it in the bin themselves) I will never trust Takealot again. It is about time we had Amazon here in SA to take on this arrogant monopoly.
72 replies
43 months ago
Wrong packages and bundles removed but STILL NO REFUND
I had new packages loaded onto my phone and my wife's on the same day in July 2022. My wife's were loaded correctly but on my number they loaded the wrong ones and actually phoned me 3 days later to tell me this and do it all over again over the phone. But when I got my bill on 12th August I found that they were billing me for additional bundles I did not order plus they had charged an "early upgrade fee" triggered by reversing their OWN errors when they loaded the wrong packages. My wife's bill was almost correct, excepted for a wrong itemised billing charge but mine was overcharged by over R700. I have phoned at least 30 times over 2 months, been put constantly on hold, transferred to other departments who cannot help and the line drops constantly when talking to someone. I have been promised call backs by supervisors several time but NO-ONE EVER CALLS BACK. I received reference 9 numbers: 1-2361228338, 1-23645101466, 1-24274507550, 1-24848588531, 1-22953959567, 1-25053918005, 1-25763157636219, 1-25811828110 and 1-26280308200. Eventually the wrong packages and bundles were been removed prior to the Sept 12th account but still one wrong itemised billing charge remained on my wife's number. However, getting a refund or credit of the R700+ in overcharges for August is IMPOSSIBLE. I cannot get hold of anyone who will do this. I just get passed from one person to another who creates tickets but no-one ever actions it!! If anyone at MTN ever bothers to read this the least you can do is PHONE ME to finally sort this out.
132 replies
43 months ago
Really easy to deal with customer service
Agent was helpful and knowledgeable and made it really easy to get the cover I needed at a very competitive premium
133 replies
45 months ago
Broke my hard drive, refuse to pay, lying about the service call I made
I sent in my Macbook Pro to iStore South Africa (via Somerset West store) for a battery replacement and soon afterwards the hard-drive began crashing occasionally, and then gradually more frequently. Eventually it failed altogether. I called the iStore South Africa Service Centre to ask about the cost of a new hard drive and was told in no uncertain terms "we don't replace any hard drives any more". I was astonished by this and pressed the point, asking if that means I must throw away a R55,000 laptop which is only 4 years old. The agent was unmoved and adamant that they don't ever replace any hard drives. So I called Apple Support on their 0800 number with this feedback and they said to try DigiCape, who did indeed replace the drive and reported that "the SSD is faulty due to loose Logic Board ***** below the SSD". They confirmed that this ***** would need to have been removed by iStore to perform the battery replacement a few months earlier. I concluded that iStore was at fault for not tightening this ***** and thus gradually destroying my hard drive and so I went back to them. Their response has been appalling: arrogant, evasive, delaying and totally dishonest. They now claim that they WOULD have replaced the drive if I had sent the unit to them (probably at my cost?), but since I went to Digicape it is now not their problem! For over a month they have refused to listen to the service call in question where I was told that replacing the drive was impossible for iStore; pretending that the call record does not exist / "searching" for calls from numbers other than the one I provided to them!! Even after I have sent them documentary PROOF of my call records showing the date, time and duration of the call to their service centre on 22nd July, they are still trying to pretend I never spoke to them!! Now that I have provided the proof they just don't answer any emails and the Somerset West iStore (from whom I have bought many Apple products) is also totally ignoring this issue. Be warned: don't ever deal with iStore again, Digicape is way better (as you can see from the reviews here on Hello Peter.
0 replies
50 months ago
VOIP not working for 4 months - all calls ignored, no call back, yet they charge me
It is now 4 months since I ordered an additional VoIP service from MWeb with a phone supplied by them and it has not worked since day 1 - in spite of me having another VoIP service from them that works perfectly with the same setup but using a Fanvil phone I already had. The reason is that the Yealink phones Mweb supply don't work with the Mweb service and THEY KNOW THIS yet keep on selling them!! I have called the MWeb technical call centre and customer service dozens of times - each time having to go through the whole story with the service agent that takes my call - it's not possible to speak with the same person more than once. I've always been told that my complaint / problem will be escalated. In the early days (last Nov) technical people did call back and changed all my settings, sent me a series of replacement phones, etc. Nothing makes any difference - their service just does not work with Yealink phones. So over the last two months they just ignore me but keep on billing me! I have tried asking to speak to managers in customer service or billing or technical to try get a refund or some other resolution but NO-ONE EVER CALLS BACK. When I call in again I find the previous ticket has been closed even though they never actioned it at all!! At the end of each call you are requested to rate the service that you received - often the person in question deserves a positive rating because are just the front line person who is logging a ticket for escalation. But what is the point of that if there is never any further action? So if I was ever asked for a rating for MWeb overall - that would be a big fat 0.
0 replies
71 months ago
Zero response from MTN to 5 months ongoing technical fault
I am an MTN Contract Customer. Since late 2019 my voicemail service does not work. In menus on the phone I have recorded a personal voicemail response and this has always worked fine for many years. On my end I have changed nothing and the recorded message still shows as active from my iphone. But suddenly since late 2019, callers only get a "Voicemail Lite" response which does not even work, as it does not ever inform me that someone called. I have reported this to the call centre 3 times. The latest was on 12th March & I was given a technical ticket number but since then absolutely nothing has been done to fix it. Also: Call centre staff were never any help as they only deal with account issues. Recently it has got worse. It has become impossible even to get hold of a human being on 135. The IVR does not even work! I have also emailed the same query to customercare@mtn.co.za and only ever got an automated Enquiry Reference Number and nothing else to follow that. I have also tried posting the problem on their Facebook page but also got no response.
0 replies
124 months ago
MTN supports criminals over loyal customers
I have already detailed the issues under ref 1962125. The response was totally inadequate as follows:<br> <br> \ Please note the matter has been escalated to Management of our technical support team to investigate on ref SMC/00004968206 logged. Regards, Nompumelelo, REQ:6243367\".<br> <br> No contact info is given and no method is offered for me to follow-up with Nompumeleo. No-one from MTN has ever got back to me since then with any feedback on the matter. <br> <br> Meantime, 808 are still telling me that it is all my fault for \"not reporting the phone stolen earlier\". They now say that they were in fact open in the evening and could have blocked phone earlier. However that is not what I was told when I called in and they say they have no record of the call. I believe that it was the 173 service I called that night and was given wrong info when they told me that I could only block the phone on 808 in business hours the next day.<br> <br> I have asked them to pull the recording of the conversation I had on 173 but no-one at MTN seems to know how to do that. In the end, MTN are still blaming me (and charging me) for my actions undertaken under the (wrong) instructions of their own staff.<br> <br> Not satisfied at all."
75 replies
Review Distribution
5 Star
2 (18.181818181818183%)
4 Star
0 (0%)
3 Star
0 (0%)
2 Star
2 (18.181818181818183%)
1 Star
7 (63.63636363636363%)