How to lose customers ... by MTN

<p><span style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Avenir W01';">I have been a loyal MTN customer for 20 years. After receiving notification last month (April) that I was due for a contract upgrade, I went into my local MTN store (Norwood Mall, Johannesburg) where I had done my previous three upgrades. I chose the 24 month R229 contract with 50 Anytime Minutes, 100 SMS and 300 MB of data, which came with the iPhone 5s. I perused the colours and chose the white and silver phone. Then the salesman Ashley said that I could not upgrade because they did not have any of those iPhones in stock, and he would have to find one for me.</span></p> <p style="color: #555555;">I returned to the store twice more during April. It was the same story. At no time did Ashley contact me or follow up with me. On the 30th of April, I returned to the store and demanded that Ashley give me the paperwork to fill out so that I could still take advantage of the April contract offer. I filled in the paperwork but he still did not have an iPhone 5s for me. He refused to give me the name and contact number of the franchise owner, and told me the best thing to do would be for ME to call other MTN stores to find stock of the phone I wanted. Then I could come and fetch the paperwork from him and take it to that branch!!! I was dumbfounded at this pathetic service.</p> <p style="color: #555555;">I called 808 and they advised me to call MTN Direct on ***. A very sweet lady called Angelique tried to ***ist me but she said that she had no phones on her system available for the R229 monthly contract. That contract has now gone up and from May costs R299 a month. Ironically she didn't even have stock of the iPhone 5s to honour the new contract!!!</p> <p style="color: #555555;">I phoned the Rosebank Mall branch twice. No iPhone 5s. I tried to call the Balfour Park branch twice but held on for several minutes - they never answered the phone. At that point I decided to write this report.</p> <p style="color: #555555;">My questions are the following:</p> <p style="color: #555555;">How can MTN offer the phone with this contract if they have no stock of the phone? To the extent that the customer is forced to pay extra through no fault of their own...</p> <p style="color: #555555;">How can there be no comebacks for useless service from franchises?</p> <p style="color: #555555;">How can customers be told to themselves track down the product they have chosen after it was offered by the service provider? (!!!)</p> <p style="color: #555555;">After more than four weeks I have still not done the upgrade. And with MTN, the thumb seems to have absolutely no idea what the other nine fingers are doing. There appears to be no central database or service provider. That is a misnomer if I've ever heard one. Hahaha!</p> <p style="color: #555555;">I am now going to Vodacom. Their service cannot possibly be worse than this.</p>