[See new updates below] mweb Business,in its wisdom, decided to migrate a whole bunch of websites to a new server. In the process they 'lost' the pointer to my website, so when you try go to www.imbizo.com, you get this:
Trying to reach mweb business technical support is proving more difficult than getting an interview with
the Pope. As I write this, I'm sitting on speaker-phone (thank God) in my office, being interminably regaled by a boring voice telling me all about mweb business and its (in their own opinion), bloody marvellous services. Including inviting me to go visit their website while I'm on hold, to see what they have on offer. Is that supposed to take my mind off the irritation of waiting forever to be helped, because they're (you guessed it), 'experiencing higher than usual call volumes". For which read: We're skimping on staff, so you can just wait.
Finally get answered, can't help, then get put through to Thate, who also can't help me. He promises to put the right person on the line, disappears and I'm back to the messages and awful musak. This time I'm told that my patience is appreciated. That helps. I immediately feel a whole lot better. Man, I could write a whole lot more Blogs if I called mweb Business more frequently!
Clearly, someone didn't fully think through the migration detail and like Microsoft, the customer is being used to de-bug the system. Not acceptable.
UPDATE: Gave up waiting after half an hour. Have called Koos Bekker, the Naspers CEO's PA. She's given me the number for Rudi Jansen who heads up mweb Business. Neither he nor his PA, Liesl, are available. I've left a message. I'll keep you posted. A luta continua!
UPDATE 2: Liesl has called back and is referring the issue to the GM of mweb Business JHB region. Why does it always take this sort of freakin' Cecil B de Mille production to get an issue sorted in South Africa I wonder? I'll update you as the saga progresses.
UPDATE 3: Hours and hours later and the site is still MIA - Missing In Action. mweb Business' lack of professionalism is reaching a new low. Still waitin' people...
UPDATE 4: No notification or communication from anyone at mweb Business. I looked for my site (18:20) and a whole freakin' day later, it's back. What abysmal dis-service. Biiiiiig vote of no-confidence in mweb Business.
UPDATE 5: 26th February. Weeks after the cursed 'migration' by these unremittingly uncaring people at mweb Business, there's still no cache of my website, and I can't access visitor stats. In typical large corporate South African fashion, mweb Business appears not to give a tinker's cuss about the perceived 'small' customer. I bet they're jumping like hell with the larger corporate accounts, though....
UPDATE 6: 28th February. Wow! Just because you write about mweb Business' crappy service they suddenly wake up. Got a call today from customer service executive Genevieve Mattheus. Apologising for my experience. I told her nary a person from the upper echelons of mweb Business had bothered to get back to report on what they heck they were doing. Got all the usual 'that's unacceptable' noises from her. Sick-making. Why don't they just get off their lazy butts and do some client-service training? Yuck! The mweb Business ad caption is 'Achieve the extraordinary.' They've managed that alright. Just at the wrong end of the bloody service continuum.
UPDATE 7: 29th Feb '08. Guess what? Today we have statistics back, but in mweb Business' benighted incompetence, they've lost all previous stats. That's kinda unhelpful I'd say. I think they should be nominated for the Ignoble Awards this year for unprecedented incompetence and a don't give a shit attitude to clients.
UPDATE 8: 4th March '08. Got a call from mweb's Mario yesterday. To tell me he's the techie involved in re-constructing my stats from 'inception in 2006'. I pointed out that in fact mweb have hosted my site since January 2000! Every time they call they dig an even bigger hole. If the inertia factor and accompanying (guaranteed) screw-ups were not such a factor, I'd change ISPs now. As I said before....
UPDATE 9: 6th March '08. Three pointers - all to my one website. Now mweb business have contrived to ensure that if we make changes to my website, their caches aren't cleared or updated, or their mirror servers simply don't pick up the changes. Is there no end to the incompetence that these people can hatch?
If you value your sanity and your business,
DON'T USE THESE PEOPLE AS YOUR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER (ISP).
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