The general concept in any fair business transaction is that one party pays an agreed amount to get a specific product or service from the other party. If the money offered is not adequate or if the product does not meet the agreed specifications then a problem arises. With ZOL and their billing services it is apparent that there is a genuine problem.
I have had the pleasure of being a ZOL customer since January 2014. The performance of their modem and the internet speeds have so far been satisfactory. The problem however is with their billing system.
Having paid my month’s subscription on the 12th of February I expected to get service until the 12th of March. After all, the agreement was that for $59 I would have an internet connection for a full month, right? Wrong! I was disappointed to have services terminated on the 6th of March, a full week before my month’s subscription had expired.
I spent two days unsuccessfully trying to get through on the ZOL Billing and Support number (086 77123123). All I got from this was an auto prompt voice that kept thanking me for my patience(seriously?) instead of taking me through to real assistance. I decided to pay the ZOL guys a visit.
The response from the attending person was plain and simple. They were “sorry” that my connection had been terminated but it was how their billing system worked and I should have topped up my account between the 1st and 5th as this was when they took payments for renewing accounts. After all, they send reminders for account payments to be made during this period.
Sadly I was unable to get my account reconnected for the last seven days of my “monthly” subscription, and the holder of the contact number that I was asked to try to get my issue resolved has been ignoring my calls. Looking at what’s happened here the big mystery isn’t with the unresponsive customer care numbers or a billing system that is configured for payments on set days. My qualm lies with a lack of disclosure on how their system works and their lack of a reasonable solution.
If ZOL is unable to calculate a bill that covers the number of days remaining before the next billing cycle why do they accept money that covers a full month’s services? Does this mean that if I had made my payment in the last week of the month I’d only get service for one week? Am I going to get my one week’s worth of internet or I should consider it money donated to the ZOL billing system? A lot of questions there that deserve some good answers.
At the end of the day it’s only fair that whatever service is promised by any provider should be made available as promised. Anything less than this is unfair and deserves some form of redress.
Update :
Following information gathered from ZOL representatives in formal communication and through open online discussion there has been clarification to the billing system issue.
ZOL services are on a calendar month, on-going subscription basis which explains the suspension of services I experienced on the 6th of March. The fact that a delay in payment (i.e. not meeting the deadline of the 5th) was going to result in a suspension of services by the 6th of each month was unfortunately not communicated to me when I started using their service.
ZOL referenced the pro-rated figure for my first month in the first email they sent me and coincidentally I received service up until the 10th of February which seemed to tie in with a 30 day subscription period. This should not have happened in the first place. ZOL has mentioned that they had been upgrading their billing system at the time which could have resulted in extended service on my account.
Any misunderstanding has been attributed to a lack of complete clarification of their billing system from the very beginning and it is safe to say they have made a lot of effort to explain this whole issue.
Update: Our comments system (Disqus) is having issues where some comments are not showing automatically, and some incorrectly caught as spam. We will be migrating to a different comment system soon which should hopefully take care of the problem.
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68 comments
be fair with your slating of ISP’s. TelOne do exactly the same thing as well
I dont see how Telone comes in wen he is referring to something which happened with ZOL.
I think he was just saying TelOne also pro-rate the ADSL and line rental charges. At least they do on our phone bills.
they dont on the broadband side! and they still charge you 1st to 31st regardless of when you start the service
lol
TelOne do the exact same thing with Billing and will NOT pro-rate if you ask them, ZOL will, you just need to call them up
ZOL Customer service is a nightmare, had issues with them for a different issue.
We realise this (unfortunately) and are correcting it. Six new agents are currently going through training and will join the call centre team in 2 weeks.
Thanx David…..guess I will give it another month and see if I get any joy from your guys.
Would really appreciate that thank you. Let me know if no improvement.
I don’t think it’s just the call centre that needs to be beefed up in terms of staff, I think you need more techs as well!
We signed a contract with ZOL on the 11th of October 2013 for a fibre connection (customer id 39464) we were told it would take 3 weeks to connect us after paying the initial fee as well as a monthly fee for the 1st month- which all in came up to just under a grand. About a month later the guys come round laid the fibre & installed a media converter & we were told it would take a day for it to be activated. Its been over 3 months, many phone calls & e-mails later I can tell you we are still not connected.
Thank god we hadn’t terminated our contract with yoafrica
That isn’t a problem with number of techs. It is a complete failure! Let me investigate and will get someone to contact you directly.
True to your word someone has gotten in touch, hope she’ll be able to help get this resolved.
Well maybe your initial communication with the sales agent went a bit amiss. I also joined ZOL in the middle of the month, and was charged accordingly. The main problem arises when its time for them to check the accounts each month. It seems they do that manually because when I went at the end of the month to pay, the sales lady didn’t even touch her PC. She just wrote out a HANDWRITTEN receipt with my customer ID copied from the last month receipt, which I had brought along with me. So it looks like when they do their disconnections at the start of the month, they just take that book and go through all the customer IDs focussing on those 5 days at the start/end of a month – and ignore the ones not in that range. So your pre-programmed month went by, but because it wasn’t manually “topped up” you were disconnected. It was probably doing the same for mine, but the lady probably knew that its easier to just have me come at the start of the month to coincide with when they do their accounts. Hence charging me only for the remaining two weeks of the month.The agent who served you really should have KNOWN BETTER. Mine did.
As for calling them, I quickly leant that ANY AND ALL ADVERTISED NUMBERS ARE COMPLETELY USELESS. Get a number from the TECH GUYS – customer service people will probably, through training, only give you the official customer service lines which are a joke!
Alu, please can you let us know the network or area you are calling from? We have terminated all our TelOne lines, and are now excessively using our own VoIP range of numbers. These offer a number of advantages in terms of call processing and caller ID. We have had problems from TelOne exchanges in Gweru, Mutare and Borrowdale. These have been rectified by TelOne very quickly.
Calling from Bulawayo – using Econet.
Please let us know your ZOL ID and someone will call you
Sir,
Firstly I am very happy you are enjoying ZOL service and that you are satisfied with the ZOL speeds – this is very important to us. Thank you for choosing ZOL.
I am sorry this may not have been clearly explained to you when you signed up, but ZOL services are all on a monthly on-going subscription basis (in this sense we are similar to most ISPs but different to purely pre-paid services like Multichoice and some mobile operators). All our bills are on a calendar month basis and if you join mid-month (as you did) you are charged pro-rata for that month to bring you to a calendar month boundary.
Bills are sent out around the 20th of the month for the following month. Unpaid accounts are suspended on the 5th of the month (this gives you 5 days grace period). A total of 3 reminder/warning emails are sent before your account is suspended. Furthermore all your account information (bills, services etc) are available via our online customer portal. Every bill clearly states the charge period and due date. Furthermore every bill includes a statement that shows opening balance/new charges/payments and total due balance – with a due date.
Specifically, you joined ZOL on 9th Jan 2014 and were pro-rata charged $43.76 from 9th Jan to 31st Jan. You paid $60. You were then billed again $59 for February and you paid $60. You were were again billed $59 for March 2015. We have not received your March payment and thus you were suspended on 6th March as per our policy.
In effect you “overpaid” against your first bill, and then paid your subsequent bills late.
If you could kindly pay the outstanding amount of $41.74 you will receive services up to the end of March, at which point another $59 would be due with suspension by 5th April.
I trust this answers all the questions you posed in your penultimate paragraph and that you will agree that ZOL has not been unfair and no money has been “donated” to ZOL. We do indeed calculate “remaining days in a month cycle” and bill on you on that basis – as is clearly stated in the bills.
Kind regards
David Behr
CEO, ZOL
Forgive me Mr Behr, I highly respect your service delivery but, honestly in a world that is constantly changing and becoming more complex, this seems to me like a very ancient way to run a billing system.
So how would you run it? We used to do “any day of the month” billing cycles, but many customers complained and wanted it monthly. The only thing for certain is you cannot please all the people all the time – as much as we try! At the end of the day if a customer simply refuses to read bills or warnings or notices sent to them, it really doesn’t matter how you run a billing system.
Hi David I am satisfied customer. Your billing system is not a problem. Your real problem are your sales and support people . It takes me an average of 2 days to get hold of the person who manages my various accounts. They have apologised to me but I still believe that is riduculous amount of time for me to get solutions to my problems when i am trying to run my business
I agree, we do have a problem here and we are make a number of changes this month.
Are you trying to change the way and ISP bills? good luck! Read their info pages. It says Monthly Prepaid Service.
Would be nice if they used the right logo 🙂
fixed. thanks
No sweat
spoton bro, they did the same thin tome, i paid on the 15th of feb and expected service until the 15th of march, alas, they disconnected me end of feb, luckily i had me some backdoor settings so i told them to keep it shut till further notice
Well now who is being unfair? ZOL or you using “some backdoor settings”. hmmm…. isn’t that theft?
I am not one to be affected by morality, hahhaa
But you do lose the right to complain about a service that you are stealing! Anyway I’ve looked at your account and it is indeed suspended as you have not paid the $29 monthly fee. Your unit is not connecting to the network currently (backdoor or not), so I will assume you were just joking because I am certain you are smarter than to admit you are stealing service in a public forum!
hahahaha, yeah right, i was trolling you, but out of curiosity how did u check my account,u went and looked at all accounts that were signed upon the 15th of February and then narrowed it down to $29 package and who has been defaulting?
I’m sorry to disappoint you Mr. Behr, but I doubt he is any smarter.
I have been with yoafrica for 5 years and the billing is based from the first to the last day of the month and not from the day you pay.
I don’t use ZOL any more because we had support nightmares in our area for the last mile they were offering at the time, but from the sounds of it this is a simple misunderstanding about how their billing system works, it seems it is fair but you just misunderstood.
From my experience YoAfrica works exactly the same and seem open to discussing it if I get confused or forget to pay on time.
The problem here is that ZOL doesn’t make it clear to it clients. I also use ZOL but i got to know this after going to their office. I had tried getting assistance on their online support system but it was a waste of time. ZOL guys, just take this as feedback and make adjustments to your support service. The connection is great and probably the best. If support is sorted, you will be on top. Am in a client’s office right now and they have been considering moving over to you but the support question is delaying the decision…
Titotrust, the bills are crystal clear. They show the service, the period it refers to, the due date, and total owed. Very hard to make it much clearer! But we are open to your suggestions.
I am actually very surprised that David Behr has the time to reply on this forum, but serious issues that I raised with the crap service that ZOL have been giving us since taking over from Ecoweb have not been attended to, despite repeated reference to them. I had my problems with Ecoweb but NEVER to the extent we are experiencing with ZOL. Just getting through to Support is a nightmare and we have never had resolution to problems within 24 hours. At one time our account was suspended, but no communication. Three months after that we still do not get any invoices despite them acknowledging receipt of payment. The last communication indicated my account was in credit, but a few days later the account was disconnected without warning and all of a sudden there are huge arrears! It’s now over 12 months since takeover from Ecoweb and we repeatedly gave evidence of no arrears being brought forward from that era but to date the issue remains unresolved. The closest I got was that they were waiting for reversing entries from Ecoweb but in the meantime they suspend my account for those arrears! Please check the ZOL – 35489 account and all the correspondence on it that was never attended to. Surely, I don’t need a public forum to get attention from ZOL? At least I cannot complain about rudeness from your staff!
I am very sorry about the service you have received. I do take the time to deal with many things during the day, and I appreciate your feedback. I really do not mind digging into areas that are obvious issues as you have raised. I did look at your account, which is current Active. Someone will get back to you today – we can add multiple email addresses to bills and notices so that you can be sure to get them.
You want customer service, you post your issue in public. At least for me, I try to get service through the normal channels. But if they do not respond adequately to it, Facebook is your place. Just post everything from the agents you spoke to, names, how long you waited, how many agents you spoke to, time and dates, etc. The more people see such comments about a company’s service, the less they inclined to try get service from the company.
And yes, vote with your wallet if they cannot resolve your issue!
I will appreciate it very much if I can get the courtesy of a response to my complaint about being billed for a service that never was.
I have been using ZoL for only one month now, and the service is great after 6 in the evening. During the day it’s horribly slow. Still, this doesn’t take any toll on me since I only use it after dark anyway. The customer service is horrible over the phone, nothing is ever done. The service at the ZoL office however, is very helpful and very efficient. Anyway, I haven’t paid this month because I am in SA until next month, and I have received an email telling me my account has been disconnected and due for suspension. Since I will only be back next month, how do I get my account reconnected? Do I simply have to pay the $52 owed?
I’m also a ZOL client, and I agree their billing system is a headache, their support is rubbish, utter rubbish! I’ve never been angrier, than when I tried to call their support lines.
Personally I think the worst part of the ZOL billing system is when you skip a payment. I still don’t understand why one has to pay for a month during which one didn’t get service. If they so want to be like Multichoice, then they should learn from Multichoice that does not charge for the months that you didn’t subscribe to their service, and you don’t have to call them to notify them that you won’t be home for a month, you just simply don’t pay, and they simply won’t bill you.
I just hope they’ll understand billing or invoicing is for services delivered or to be delivered.
I think their service can be better than this, I hope it does get better.
just curious – did you tell them before hand that you didn’t want to receive service in that month that you didn’t pay?
Simon, thank you for your comments. You are right if you skip a payment you will be suspended. The ZOL service is not, and never has been, a “pay for 30 days” at a time model. We send out fiscal tax invoices for your service, and request that you pay them to avoid being cut off. We really are not trying to be Multichoice or a mobile operator. As you know we are giving away free equipment to connect to ZOL and so we ask that you pay us a monthly subscription in return. If Multichoice handed over a free decoder, I suspect there would be a contract required to pay monthly. I understand this model does not seem to suit you, and we are always looking at making changes so we appreciate this feedback. But please don’t say we are “utter rubbish” because you do not like the current business model. I don’t believe any ISP currently allows you just to pay when you are home – the end result of that is a daily rate to connect to the Internet, which is not an ISP model in Zimbabwe.
He said ZOL support is utter rubbish, he didnt say your business model is utter rubbish, did he?
I have absolutely no issues with the billing cycle of ZOL as when they made the changes they did inform their clients and explain why they where doing so.
I have no idea how the person who handled your sign-up explained the billing cycle but I do agree perhaps the sales/billing agents need to make an effort when signing up a new customer to explain this and avoid this kind of confusion.
Otherwise keep on improving ZOL!
Thank you Raymond, we will do so. It would be great if one day we can offer every type of billing cycle that any individual would like. At the end of the day there is a trade of in making it complex vs cost.
I honestly think that your billing cycle is the last thing that needs to be worked on, I would rather you invested more in your support and infrastructure.
As you correctly put it you cannot please everyone, as long you don’t ignore everyone?
You are correct, and we have hire a number of new support agents as well as improving our training of them. We know we are under staffed in support. Please give us two weeks.
Thank you @davidbehr:disqus that is all a customer can ask.
l just want to say ZOL customer services is the worst l ever met and for me it actually borders on sabotage.l am referring here to B2B relations eg if they lose a customer to you know you are in for a rough ride
I EXPERIENCED THE SAME THING WITH ZOL.SO I VOTED WITH MY MONEY AND CHANGED THEM AS MY ISP. PROBLEM SOLVED, I CHANGED OVER
Oh Zol, I have tried to post before, but thanks to your internet service…. i can;t see my posts. I have had some very serious issues with ZOL, I cannot put them here coz you might think I am attacking your brand so if you are serious about your customers, my email is cchikwama@gmail.com. Send me an email and i will tell you what is really going down with ZOL on the lowdown
Will do thank you.
Please note the issue you had with comments was NOT ZOL. It was TechZIm who had a problem with their comment system. Please verify with TechZim. it is very easy to blame the ISP for everything, but there are always a lot of parts to any problem.
David Behr has conviniently eluded the question on bad and/or poor customer service which everyone here is complaining about i think he will do better in politics…
Not at all! TechZim had a problem with their comment system so my comments were not being put up. I have responded to every comment and have acknowledged the issue, and explained how we are resolving it. Please check with TechZim over their comment issue.
I just got some ZOL junkmail advertising Superfast Fibre connections and
was quite impressed but the general trend of comments is a bit alarming. What I am
learning is that ZOL internet is excellent, when it works, but there
WILL be downtime and billing issues at some point. It sounds like an
uphill battle to get ZOL to sort it out when it inevitably happens AND
you won’t get your money or down-time back in credit, which is a bit off putting.
Other than that ZOL is the dream. Too bad I can’t afford it without having to live in a tent. I’d probably have to resort to bit torrent piracy – else $150- sorry, $149 (x12) for bandwidth and then even more for content streaming services.
As a zol client is really enjoy the services, there are a few individuals that really stand out very technical Raymond,pardon and rodney and the other ones are just there to fill the void. ask for these guys any day your issue will be sorted
Thank you very much for that feedback. We are trying to get more people like that!
I had a girl named Nyasha help me quite well and a guy called Chris also. My customer ID is ZOL 39574
Zol has some issues Mr Behr but you guys have covered a lot of good ground. Thank you for taking time out to reply our various issues. Keep up the good work, your open door policy is most appreciated.
Wanna be president? I’d vote for you.
I must be one of the few clients who actually swears by ZOL. Their service is good barring the occasional hiccup with billing. True getting to support can sometimes be awkward, but ZOL are one of the only service providers i know who bother calling back. Their NOC department understands their network, and faults get resolved in a timely and transparent manner.
as a customer of ZOL for about a year now, that’s been my experience too, of all the ISP’s in Zim, uMax was probably the only ISP that had high quality customer service (not used uMax customer service in over a year so not aware of current standards and how they compare)
Its great to hear that David and the ZOL team are taking on more staff AND beefing up training procedures because its not just about having numbers its about having the quality to match it.
Nigel! If you feel the ZOL staff has given you particularly good or bad service – please email ceo@zol.co.zw where the management will take action.
Doesn’t work. Tried it in the past. I don’t think that system is monitored. Even their issue tracking system is not monitored. I have tracking ID or whatever they call it that’s outstanding since Dec 1, 2013. Their customer service is in shambles
After two years of ZOL nonsense I gave up. I’m in Norton and using Wimax which was unreliable at best but I let that go.
1. My internet was down for three months. They kept billing me despite my emails and phone calls. I finally got it fixed and they carried on billing the ‘balance’ from when my internet was done.
2. They sent an email sometime in July to say the home broadband had been decreased from $115 to $59. They kept billing me $115. On Dec1 I realised the error & emailed them a breakdown of what happened. Sent same email to their billing address at least 3 times. No response. By my calculation they owed me up to mid-March. Feb 6 I was disconnected. I went to see their customer service manager. Up to now haven’t heard from her. So for an exercise in frustration and total customer disregard try ZOL. Never again.
ZOL would probably come out tops in the worst customer care provider of the century. It boggles the mind why Liquid gets it right and ZOL does the exact opposite. It takes more than 15 min for your call to be answered and another 15 min being asked whether your cable is plugged in or what your public IP address is. This clearly means that there are helpdesk operators who instead of logging an incident are busy trying to play techie. The new helpdesk line is of poor quality, and you would be lucky if d does not drop,making you start the process all over. Instead of wasting money monthly on ZOL support calls (more than 2 hours) i will give other ISPs a go and hopefully this will solve my headache.
I have now moved to fibre from wimax,the downside is that you dont know how much you have used from your monthly limit,before you know it you get cut off and a message that you have used all your monthly allowance.
Why not have a app to check your balance before one starts a download that will finish all your bandles that you would have saved for browsing.
Think about it,less hassles on the support team.