OPEN WEB CHARGED ME 196 RAND FOR 4 HOURS DOWNLOAD TIME.
I bought what I thought to be 1 month of prepaid uncapped adsl from Open Web (‘Uncapped adsl LITE’ – 196 R/M) on 30 June at 196 R (direct payment with credit card). It worked fine the first evening. Next day no more connection. I paid 196R for uncapped adsl from 30 June 19h00 to 30 June 0h00 (4 hours). Open Web support responded to my query“The site explicitly states that activating the account would have run from 30June to 30 Jun in big red letters, and then you have to click accept”. Strictly legally spoken I imagine they're right - there was a pop-up mentioning the connection was from 30 June to 30 June; I quickly clicked through and probably misread 30 July. However, I'm an average internet user with higher education and was fooled by the website's advertising of 196 R/month. Consequently, this might happen to others. It's certainly not fair practice towards consumers to let someone pay 196 R for 4 hours connection when the site advertises 196 R per month. Hopefully this post will avoid some others to experience the same mishap. Open Web support has been courteous but inflexible. I consider that the disparity between the advertised 196 R per month and the 196 R for 4 hours that they charged constitutes a breach of trust. I put the full communication between Open Web and myself below to be fair to the company.

Gilles wrote:
Dear OpenWeb,
I've register yesterday and paid with creditcard. My account was functioning
directly after, but now when I try to connect or even manage my account I
get a message saying 'invalid user name and passworld'. I have not changed
these since yesterday. Can you help?
Thanks,
Gilles

Answer from OpenWeb:
Greetings
If you activated it on the 30th it would have expired that same night
The site explicitly states that activating the account would have run
from 30June to 30 Jun in big red letters, and then you have to click
accept
Kind Regards
Edwin [Hidden Web Address] from Gilles:
You mean Openweb has no problem making me pay 196 R for 4 hours of
downloading, whilst the site explicitly states that the fare is
196Rmonth?If this is the case I know a few consumer websites which will be happy
to let the public judge whether this is fair practice or not.
The minimum decent service response would be to activate my account
for the rest of the month. I will await your response for 12 hours.
After that I'll lodge complaints in every consumer website I find.
Regards,
Gilles

Re-re-answer from Open Web:
I appreciate your email!
Did you not read the big bold red writing that states if you activate your account now, it will expire at the end of the month? I also presume you did not read the Terms of Service you agreed to upon signup.
When you post your comments on these consumer sites, please include the fact that we advertise it clearly when YOU choose to activate the account.
You cannot blame Woolworths for selling you a chicken a day before its sell by date if the sell by date is clearly printed on the packet.
We also have NO choice as to how we bill. We resell accounts from suppliers who choose our billing methods for us.
If you do post, please send me the links so that I can respond on each post. Good luck!
Kind regards,
Keoma