Former Supersonic customers hit with debt collector demands on paid bills

Numerous former Supersonic customers are frustrated with the Internet service provider (ISP) handing them over to debt collectors for accounts they believed were paid up.

Over the past few days, MyBroadband has received several complaints from users who had been contacted by lawyers or debt collection agents claiming to be acting on behalf of the MTN-owned ISP.

These agents would inform the former customers that they owed Supersonic for products cancelled and paid up months or years ago and threaten them with legal action.

Supersonic’s Google Reviews and Hellopeter pages were filled with similar complaints from frustrated former customers, with a big jump in negative ratings since early February 2024.

Supersonic’s average rating on both platforms was  1.3 out of 5 at the time of publication.

MyBroadband found over seventy 1-star ratings for Supersonic on Hellopeter from 1 March to 19 March 2024, with most complaints around billing issues, outstanding refunds, and poor communication.

Many of these were from users surprised to learn that Supersonic believed they owed them money and had handed them over for debt collection.

“I had an alarming call just now from an outsourced lawyer saying that I owe Supersonic over R8,000 for services used,” one user wrote.

“I cancelled my Supersonic account three years ago when I relocated. Since then, I have been with another service provider. This is the first [time] I am hearing of this.”

A second complainant said their account had been closed for more than four years with no outstanding amounts.

“Only now getting a phone call that they handed me over for payment of R6,000,” they said.

These were only two of a plethora of similar complaints about paid-up bills being handed over to debt collectors.

Continued deductions after cancellations and poor communication

Some users also complained that the ISP had continued to deduct money from their accounts after cancelling their subscriptions.

“I cancelled my Supersonic subscription about 18 months ago because I was moving house,” one user said.

“I have recently found out that every month since that date, they have been deducting R100 from my account. Last month (February) that amount jumped to R600.”

“I have now had a call from a debt collector to say I have an outstanding balance with Supersonic of R100.”

“The third month in a row with exactly the same promises,” another said.

“Useless firm. They owe me money for double debit orders, and I can’t get them to do the most basic stuff.”

Many also complained about Supersonic’s poor communication and customer service.

“Getting this issue resolved through normal channels is like pulling blood out of a stone,” one user said.

Among the myriad complaints, a MyBroadband reader also said that he had been contacted for unpaid Supersonic bills in recent weeks, even though he never signed up for any of the company’s products.

He explained that a representative of Supersonic had collected names and contact details of individuals in his neighbourhood who would be interested in taking up fibre-to-the-home products after Vumatel started rolling out infrastructure in their area.

However, he never agreed to any product with Supersonic and no FTTH equipment was installed at his home.

Although he received a notification that Supersonic would contact him to make an appointment for an installation, he ignored this, believing it was a mistake and was never contacted as promised.

Supersonic appointed a new debt collection agency

MyBroadband asked Supersonic whether it was aware of the complaints and if there was a possible explanation for the sudden widespread debt collection attempts.

The company confirmed it was seeing a spike in customer queries relating to billing-related matters.

“We attribute this to a recent change to our billing system and the appointment of a new collections agency,” said Supersonic.

“The new billing system has given us a view of outstanding transactions from the past and we are working with our customers to resolve these.”

Supersonic apologised to impacted users and said it was treating all queries with urgency, but did not state whether the debt collection attempts were unjustified.

“We remain confident that our new systems and process will assist us in offering improved service to our customers,” Supersonic stated.

The ISP also said the instance in which a customer’s account was activated without approval was an isolated matter in which its legacy system allowed leads to be migrated to active sale status.

“We can assure customers that our new system does not allow for this error to occur,” Supersonic said.