Costly Incorrect Information and Awful Service

<p>Today I received the worst possible service from a mobile communications company in probably a decade. Yesterday afternoon (circa 2pm) I purchased a sim card at the MTN store in Hyde Park. The service agent kindly set the whole thing up, including most importantly, porting my old number to the sim card I had just bought from their store. I was told to keep my phone shut, turn it on after 4 hours, dial a USSD code and then confirm if the number has ported. I followed these instructions religiously at 4 hour intervals but to no avail as the number did not port as I had been promised. Today I went back to the MTN Hyde Park store to seek further support. There, a different agent then attempted to help out and called Customer Service to understand why his system indicated that the porting process had been successful but why that wasn't reflecting on my actual phone. He was told that the MTN store had sold me a sim card that had already been activated on March 7th and consequently the porting couldn't happen. He told me that I would then have to again follow the instructions from the previous evening, and hope that within 2-24 hours (this after having already waited 24 hours), everything would be sorted out - note that there was no guarantee provided that this would work. The agent transferred me to the agent from the previous day, who called MTN HQ and was told that in fact the porting didn't happen at all because he had told me to keep my phone OFF, when I was actually supposed to have left it ON. The agent seem perplexed given that he had given me exactly the OPPOSITE instructions - it appeared that the agent was not alone in his misunderstanding of the instructions to give to customers as he also told me that the phone had to be switched off. Now I'm stuck with a phone that has a sim card I cannot use - because loading airtime or data would automatically reserve the porting request - and MTN made absolutely no effort to try and compensate me for the major inconvenience caused to me nor to acknowledge that they had a mistake that I am now having to pay for. Now I'll have to wait for 2 days (yesterday and today / tomorrow), this after having spent additional money to go back to the Hyde Park store, and MTN would have simply benefitted from my money without any remorse or compensation due to their incompetence and mistakes. For any customer, but particularly for long-term customers such as myself, this is appalling service and it just not acceptable. In spite of my loyalty to this customer, I think this is the point at which switching to a competitor is most appropriate. Very upset!</p>