Terms and Conditions – BORG TELECOM

Website Terms of Use

Introduction

These terms and conditions govern the use of the Borg Telecom, internet and VOIP services. By contracting with Borg Telecom for the services you will be lawfully regarded as having agreed to your use of the services specified being governed by this Agreement. The customer or the customer’s agent certifies that he/she is above the age of 18 years, has full contractual capacity and is duly authorised by the customer to contract on customer’s behalf.

Cancellation

A cancellation request in respect of any Internet, VOIP or Dialup service must be completed via the control panel http://cp.borgtelecom.co.za/ one calendar month (30 days) before the date of ceasing the service.

Borg Telecom reserves its rights to change its prices at any time on reasonable notice.
Borg Telecom reserves the right to stop offering certain web hosting package types if it deems it necessary.
Borg Telecom will then either provide the web hosting service for the remainder of the time that has been paid for or refund the amount paid for that specific package.

Payment and payment terms

The amounts owing for the initial month will be pro-rated from the date of signature to the end of the initial month and shall be added to the first debit at the end of the subsequent month. Customer shall ensure that there are sufficient funds in the account, details of which have been supplied to Borg Telecom to cover such amount.
In the event that a debit order amount is recalled due to incorrect information supplied by customer or due to insufficient funds in the customer’s bank account the hosting of the website will be immediately suspended.
In the case of a service being suspended due to non-payment a reconnection fee of R150.00 will be payable before the applicable service is unsuspended.
In the case of an annual or biannual service being terminated by the client before their prepaid service term ends there will be a calendar month notice period and a R100 administration fee charged.
Borg Telecom may record the existence of the customer’s account with a Credit Bureau.
Borg Telecom may record and transmit details of how the customer has performed to a Credit Bureau, and how the account is conducted by the customer in meeting their obligations on the account.
Liability for registration and use of domain names
Borg Telecom has not and does not conduct pre-registration searches in respect of the customer’s use and registration of its selected Service/s and is therefore not obliged to either advise the customer about possible conflicting third party rights or to take steps to ensure against possible disputes concerning a third party’s intellectual property or other rights.
The use or registration of the service by customer does not interfere with nor infringe the rights of any third party in any jurisdiction with respect to trademark, service mark, tradename, company name, close corporation name, copyright nor any other intellectual property right, and that customer has the right to use the service as requested.
Borg Telecom cannot act as an arbiter of disputes arising out of the use of our services. At the same time, customer acknowledges that Borg Telecom may be presented with evidence that the services registered by a customer violates the rights of a third party. In such instance Borg Telecom shall be allowed to provide a complainant with customer ‘s name and address and all further communication will exclude Borg Telecom and Borg Telecom will have no further obligations to the customer. In such instance customer shall be entitled to continue using the services for customer by Borg Telecom until a court or other body with jurisdiction directs otherwise.

Referral Programme

Users may only use the programme to refer other people. Users that try to refer themselves via other accounts setup using spoofing methods will not receive their respective discounts.
Should a referred user decide to cancel their services within three months of signup, their referrer will forfeit their referral credit.

Disclaimers, Limitations and Indemnities

Borg Telecom will not be liable for any loss or damage, interruption of business, or any indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages of any kind (including lost profits), regardless of the form of action, whether in contract, delict, or otherwise which may be suffered as a result of or which may be attributable, directly or indirectly, to the use and/or registration of the Customer’s selected domain names/s OR ANY ACTION TAKEN BY BORG TELECOM IN RESPONSE TO THE ABUSE OF THE DOMAIN REGISTRATION SERVICES WHICH IT OFFERS.
The Customer hereby indemnifies and holds harmless Borg Telecom against any loss whatsoever arising from any dispute or claim or other action occasioned by the Customer’s use and registration of its selected service, even if Borg Telecom has been advised of the possibility of such damages;
Borg Telecom will not be liable for any indirect or consequential loss, damage, cost or expense of any kind, irrespective of how such damage or loss was caused, whether arising under contract, delict or otherwise, including, and not limited to, data loss or corruption, loss of profits, contracts, operation time and goodwill.
Neither Borg Telecom, its employees, affiliates, agents, third party information providers, merchants, licensers or the like, warrant that Borg Telecom’s service will not be interrupted or error free; nor do they make any warranty as to the results that may be obtained from the use of the Server service or as to the accuracy, reliability or content of any information service or merchandise contained in or provided through the Borg Telecom service, unless otherwise expressly stated in this Agreement.
Borg Telecom expressly limits its damages to the Customer for any non-accessibility time or other down time to the pro-rata monthly charge during the system unavailability. Borg Telecom specifically denies any responsibilities for any damages arising as a consequence of such unavailability.
Borg Telecom is not responsible if an external company network and firewall is setup to block access to services Borg Telecom provides. If a client’s network is setup to block certain ports or web addresses that compromise the services Borg Telecom provides it is the client’s responsibility to ensure that their network configurations are changed as necessary.

99% Website Uptime Guarantee

Borg Telecom is not responsible if any third party operated network or service experiences problems and outages (i.e. all network infrastructure and links, customer ‘s internet connection, firewall service managed by IS). If the applicable service is up and running at all times then the website will deemed to have achieved 99% uptime.
The 99% uptime guarantee does not apply to any scheduled downtime for maintenance of any of Borg Telecom infrastructure. If there is scheduled maintenance to be done the customer will be notified at least 24 hours in advance. The scheduled maintenance will always be done after hours (based on Central African Time (CAT) and the service downtime will be kept to a minimum.
Third party monitoring service reports may not be used for justification due to a variety of factors including the monitor’s network capacity/transit availability. The uptime of the service is defined as the reported uptime from the core network routers and the core infrastructure which may differ from the uptime reported by other individual services.

Use at Customer’s risk

Borg Telecom will exercise no control whatsoever over the content of the material used on, or the information passing through the Borg Telecom network and in no way moderates such content.
Customer expressly agrees that use of Borg Telecom’s Service(s) are at customer’s sole risk.
Borg Telecom is not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. You agree to take full responsibility for files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored, including e-mail, databases and site content.

Limitation on mail size

Individual mail sent to the customer’s POP3/IMAP box or forwarded to the customer’s existing email address may be limited to 5000 Kb in size each.
Refusal of services based on network, domain and/or equipment identifiers
Borg Telecom reserves the right to refuse domain and hosting services based on network, domain and/or equipment identifiers.

Termination

Should customer breach of any of the terms and conditions contained herein, including but not specifically limited to the payment terms, Borg Telecom has the right (solely at Borg Telecom’s discretion) to immediately demand payment of the full amount owing and demand compliance forthwith with all the terms and conditions, alternatively to terminate the agreement and services forthwith, in either instance without in any way derogating from any common law, contractual and or delictual rights which Borg Telecom may have.
Borg Telecom reserves the right to suspend or terminate the service of any customer that does not comply with the terms and conditions, Acceptable Use Policy, Acceptable Hosting Policy or any other contractual obligations.

General provisions

Customer confirms that all statements made in this application are true and correct. Borg Telecom reserves the right to request proof thereof.
Any disputes arising in relation to this application or the supporting documents shall be governed by the applicable laws of the Republic of South Africa.
Any form of abuse of Borg Telecom staff will result in suspension or termination of your services, irrespective of the form and medium of this abuse.
In the event that any of the terms of this document are found to be invalid, unlawful or unenforceable, such terms will be severable from the remaining terms, which will continue to be valid and enforceable.
Borg Telecom reserves the right to remove any content hosted by that member which it considers illegal or for which it has received a take-down notice.

Support Policy

The purpose of this policy is to clearly lay out Borg Telecom support policies and procedures so that all customers have a clear understanding what can be expected of us and what we expect of you, our valued customer. We ask that every customer read these policies and familiarize themselves with them. We look forward to providing quality support for all your hosting needs.

Borg Telecom will provide priority technical support services to the Customer for provided Services, subject to the terms of the Agreement. Technical support services are available during the vast majority of the day with a ticket resolved response time of 1-3 hours and a max resolve time of 6 hours attempted under most circumstances. There will be times when this is not possible and Borg Telecom does not take responsibility for this.

All technical support issues are handled solely via our online ticketing system. Technical support LEVEL 1 is available via telephone. We limit our technical support services to our area of expertise. We provide support solely for issues directly related to the physical functioning of your account. In all cases, assistance with coding, programming, or third-party programs is not covered by our free technical support.

HOW TO CONTACT SUPPORT:

Borg Telecom request that you maintain current contact information in your client area. If you do not keep your contact information in your client area updated you will not receive support from Borg Telecom. Also you will not receive any announcements about system changes and upgrades that may directly affect your account.

1. How do I identify myself and my account?

Please include your first and last name and your account id (username) when contacting support for whatever reason. You will need to send the mail from the account that is listed as either the primary, secondary (off-server) or the 3 authorised support email contacts in your client area. If any support requests are received from an email account not listed in your client area the request will go unanswered and will be closed automatically.

2. What should I include in my request for support?

When you are experiencing an error with one of the services provided by Borg Telecom, you need to include a copy of the exact error message that you received when accessing/using the service. You may find it useful when describing your problem, to take a screen shot that illustrates the problem you are experiencing and send it to us. Similarly and if relevant, please tell us the nature of any error messages that you encounter on screen together with details of what you were doing at the time the error occurred. If you did not receive an error message, then a complete description of the error including the time of the occurrence will suffice. The support staff will then attempt to recreate the error using your description, so please be as detailed as you can about the error. The more information you call tell us, the quicker we can resolve your issue.

3. Who can make changes to my web hosting account?

If someone contacts support@borgtelecom.co.za and wants administrative actions done to your account, then privileges are recognized for each person listed in the contact information in your client area. Outside of the people listed in your client area no one else from your organization can exercise administrative privileges. Certain administrative requests are restricted and will only be accepted if it is from the Primary or Secondary (off-server) email accounts.

4. What do I do if I have lost or forgotten my administrative password?

Send mail to support@borgtelecom.co.za requesting the account password. In your request please include your account username and be sure to send your email from the email address that you have listed in the contact information in your client area. If you have not updated the contact information in your client area it is more difficult to verify who the administrator for the account is. Borg Telecom will then attempt to verify the account administrator based on the registrar records for the domain name associated with the hosted account.

METHODS OF SUPPORT:

Support Tickets

This is our primary support system. We require that you submit a support ticket if you require assistance from Borg Telecom for technical support related queries, as this allows your query to be tracked, documented (which is also required before we make account modifications) and will allow multiple staff members, from different shifts to resolve your issue(s).

Please do not submit multiple tickets about the same problem as that simply creates confusion. If you need to add information to an existing ticket, please do so in the existing ticket by logging into the support system or by replying to the ticket email.

Should you have a question, we first advise you to check out the support area and knowledge base to see if your question can be answered by reading our documentation. If you cannot find an answer in the support area please submit your support request via our support ticket system and one of our technical administrators will respond as soon as possible.

All support requests that are received are placed in a queue and are generally handled on a first-come first-served basis.

Support tickets that require server modifications, extensive work to be performed, further testing / research to be performed will be scheduled for resolution at off-peak times, usually on the weekend, depending on our support team’s workload and the type of work required.

Increased response and resolution delays may be experienced in times of increased workload, peak times, server wide issues, or where your ticket requires escalation/clarification to/from other departments.

SUPPORT HOURS

Tickets: 24 hours, 7 days a week.

TELEPHONIC SUPPORT (LEVEL1):

This is the initial support level responsible for basic customer issues. It is synonymous with first-line support denoting basic level technical support functions. The first job of a LEVEL 1 specialist is to gather the customer’s information and to determine the customer’s issue by analysing the symptoms and figuring out the underlying problem. When analysing the symptoms, it is important for the technician to identify what the customer is trying to accomplish so that time is not wasted on “attempting to solve a symptom instead of a problem.” Once identification of the underlying problem is established, the specialist can begin sorting through the possible solutions available.

Technical support specialists in this group typically handle straightforward and simple problems. This includes troubleshooting methods such as verifying physical layer issues, resolving username and password problems, uninstalling/reinstalling basic software applications, verification of proper hardware and software set up, and assistance with navigating around application menus. Staff at this level have a basic to general understanding of the product or service and may not always contain the competency required for solving complex issues. Nevertheless, the goal for this group is to handle 70%-80% of the customer’s problems before finding it necessary to escalate the issue to a higher level.

EMERGENCY SUPPORT:

Our servers are constantly monitored to ensure that they are running smoothly and their connection to the internet is being maintained. If a server or services become unavailable or lose connectivity to the internet, we are immediately paged and we are usually working on a solution before users are even aware of a problem. Please see our server status page and maintenance notice board for any current/previous known issues with our servers.

In order to serve you better and give you access to support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, we have instituted an emergency support voicemail box. This can be accessed in emergencies by calling into our phone system. An emergency is defined as a website or server that is actively down and after extensive troubleshooting, has been determined to most likely be a problem on our end. We ask that you only use this option in the most extreme cases as this will page a number of system administrators. All other support options MUST be pursued before using this option. We also ask that if your website is having problems, you make sure to test it from different computers and computer networks first to make sure the problem is not on your end. Abuse of the emergency support system will not be tolerated.

GENERAL & ADVANCED SUPPORT

There are certain features such as CGI, ASP, ODBC, SSI, .NET Framework, PHP, MYSQL, etc. that we provide to our customers. However, due to the complex nature of supporting such services, we are unable to support users in learning how to use such features. We will verify that the settings are correct on our end, but to help users correctly set up their own files, we must charge a fee based on professional rates. In this document, we wish to clarify what issues shall receive free technical support (general issues) and which shall be charged for (advanced support). We make great effort to provide a fast turn-around on support for all general support issues. The time frame for advanced support will vary depending upon the complexity of the issue. If you have any confusion as to what issues would fall into the general support category and which would have a charge, please e-mail support@borgtelecom.co.za. We have outlined below several examples of general support issues and some advanced support issues:

General support issues [no charge]

You may obtain free technical support on issues similar to the following by emailing support@borgtelecom.co.za.

Problems logging into an account. [Password set-up incorrectly, ftp login incorrect, etc.]
Problems uploading files due to server issues [permissions incorrect].
System configuration problems caused by us.
Web site not loading due to errors on our part.
E-mail accounts not functioning.
Assistance with basic operation of your hosting control panel.We have tutorial movies available which demonstrate how to use your control panel. The control panel manuals are also provided on these pages.
Information regarding the required paths or availability of services to run applications or scripting you wish to install.Server based problems or errors with server services: FTP, Telnet, HTTP, SMTP, POP, MySQL, MS SQL, et
Modification of your domain name DNS (name server) settings.
Installation assistance with included CMS and related applications. This does not include setting up, configuration, customisation and ongoing use of the application. Please see the software creator’s web site for support resources

Clean up or re-installation of an account
The cost of cleaning up or re-installing an account is R112.00. If you wish to start from scratch, we will delete and re-create your account for this fee.

Advanced support [R380.00 per hour]
Technical assistance with any user-supplied C#, VB.NET, ASP, ASPX pages, PHP, etc., is not included in the ‘general support’ category. If you require assistance with your web site development including setting up or debugging an ASP or an ASP.NET program we will provide it at the rate of R340.00 an hour, billed a minimum of 15 minutes in advance as our time allows. If the error was found to stem from incorrect system settings (caused by IT Possible), the fee will be waived. Services falling under this category would include:

Web site development
Re-coding html to reduce file size
Making image files smaller in file size
Setup or configuration of services not provided as a part of your web hosting.
Setup or configuration of modules/components not currently operational or modification of existing modules/components on Airborn Internet servers.
Setup and configuration of mailing lists and autoresponders for your use.
Modification to your existing web site, scripts, forms, applications, etc. Installation, maintenance, editing, resolving issues and upgrades of your installed scripts, web site, applications, etc.
Trouble shooting problems or conflicts with your ISP (connection) services and setup.
Trouble shooting problems or errors with your web site not related to server performance.
Repeated assistance in setup of your email application.
Repeated assistance with the same issue once initially resolved or task completed.
Trouble shooting problems not directly related to your current products/services with IT Possible.
Technical support with user C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET, PHP, etc.

Note: We do not offer support with CGI or Perl scripts or applications. We highly recommend that you take advantage of the extensive resources available on the Internet for help with learning the trade.

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS:

We strive to provide you with courteous, professional, and technically accurate support. Although we understand how frustrating technical problems can be, we ask that you treat us with respect and we will do the same in return. Our ultimate goals are the same, providing you with accurate support in a timely manner.

If you feel you have been treated unfairly or have any other complaints, you may contact complaint@borgtelecom.co.za to reach a supervisor directly.

We may update this support policy from time to time without notice to you. Please check our web site for the most current version of the support policy. The newest version of the support policy takes effect immediately.

This support policy does not apply to dedicated servers, please see our dedicated server support policy.