MTN month to month home internet

I took out the MTN Home Internet Pro month-to-month package with MTN online. This is advertised as costing R399 per month, and you can cancel at any time.

Their very friendly and efficient sales person contacted by phone and took me through the process. I live on a small holding outside of Pretoria, and don’t have a street address for them to check reception. She was able to check coverage via a location pin from my phone. I paid R592,07 on 17 August to place the order. On Monday 21 August, the courier delivered the router to my work address.

I set up the router that evening, and found that it did not work. After going through a diagnostic process; I found that MTN’s network can’t provide the home internet service at my house. This is very disappointing, but I do understand that MTN cannot accurately gauge coverage, and need to rely on location data. I thus expected that I would lose the money I’ve paid for the first month’s service, and the activation costs for getting the router delivered etc. I don’t like this, and do not approve. I do understand that they can’t help it either, so I am prepared to compromise

I contacted their call centre to find out what I should do. I got transferred around and put on hold for 25 minutes before the call was ended. I called again later and the person told me I needed to take the router in to an MTN shop and get a reference number before they can do anything. I drove in to Hartbee****rt’s MTN shop in Village mall (my nearest MTN shop). They told me they needed a reference number from the call centre before they could take the router. Thye also told me that they would need an invoice to take back any router – I had not received any invoice. I called the call centre, who dropped my call again after holding for about 10 minutes. On the second call I got through to someone who then informed me that the shop has it wrong, and that I need to get the reference number from the shop. I went to the shop, and called the call centre while inside the shop. After the shop assistant and the call centre person spoke, the call centre person informed me that there is a penalty fee for early cancellation in excess of R2000. I was upset, said it’s not acceptable and asked what we should do. The person said they’ll check and put me on hold. After holding for 30 minutes the call was dropped. I asked the friendly sales assistant in the shop what I should do. Another staff member said the reason for the problem was that only a shop owned by MTN itself could take back the router, seeing as it was ordered online. They informed that the nearest such store was in Menlyn shopping centre. I expressed my concern that despite various attempts, I seem to be unable to cancel the contract, that month end was now looming, and that MTN was probably going to bill me R399 for another month. The assistant tried to check their system for my details, and said that my first month was paid, and I would only be billed the next month: basically that I had until the 21st of September to sort this out.

On Saturday, I received an invoice by mail (for R939.58). It looked like the debit order was going through, and that it was going to be more than R900!

On Sunday, I drove to Menlyn shopping centre to go sort this out. The (again very friendly and professional) sales assistant informed me that they cannot cancel the contract for me. He was willing to take back the router, but informed me that he need the invoice to do so – which I received the only the previous day. He then sent an email to the relevant department to contact me urgently to stop this contract. He said he expected them to call me on Monday morning. No one called on Monday. But the debit order DID go through on Monday, for R939,58!

I called the call centre, and they were routing me around again. I got to someone at contract cancellations and explained what happened. He asked to hold for a moment. After holding for 22 minutes, the call was sent back to the general centre, and I had to start from scratch again to get directed through two operators to get to contract cancellations.

The new operator informed me that there would be a cancellation penalty fee of more than R2000 rand if I cancel. I explained that I do not wish to cancel, I WANT the service. They are not able to delivere the dervice, therefore I do not wish to pay. She told me that I needed to follow up with after sales, explain to them that the router has been returned because the service doesn’t work and that after sales would book it from their end so as to avoid the large penalty fee. I asked about the debit order that has gone through. She said that once the router’s return has been dealt with, after sales could arrange any credits that would be due. I asked why the debit order was so much more than the R399, she said could not assist me with an explanation seeing as it is not her department. She said I should first talk to after sales, and she would put me through.

The call got cut off.

I called again and asked for after sales. I finally got through to someone. After 19 minutes we got to a point where the person was able to take the reference number from the MTN shop and log the return of the router. He was not able to assist me any further. He said someone would be calling me to take it further.

I am still waiting for this call.

I am in a position where I have paid R592.07, spent literally hours on the phone (I am not on a MTN phone), using who knows how much airtime. Did a 30km, then 120km round trips to 2 stores (more than R300 fuel?) and had a R939,58 debit order go off. The contract is STILL not cancelled. I now don’t have the router anymore, I never had ANY internet. I have heard multiple times from different representatives that MTN will want to charge me a R2000 penalty fee for cancelling this R399 month-to-month-cancel-any-time contract.

Nevermind the horrible experience of trying to get this sorted. Nevermind the fact that they are very obviously going out of their way to make it basically impossible to cancel a contract that took 10 minutes to order. What really gets me is that I feel it is unjust to have now spent more that R1800 on this, gone through all the drama, be threatened with ANOTHER R2000 fee, WITHOUT EVER GETTING ANY INTERNET SERVICE! I didn’t get ANYTHING out of all this. I don’t want to cancel, I was very keen to use this service, but there is no service to use. To be honest, if everything had been working, and I have reived the R939 bill, I would already have been extremely upset, because no-one had told me about that. The same goes for the R2000 cancellation fee – knowing about that, I never would have taken out the contract, no one said anything about that before, and it is not in the terms (I checked just now).

What do I want? It seems I can’t have the internet service. I understand MTN is not going to take responsibility for my costs, I understand they don’t care about my bad experience. I understand that they won’t refund me for the first month and associated costs.

I expect to be refunded for the R939 Debit order they put through after I cancelled, and I don’t want to hear anything about any early cancellation fee *******. This won’t make me happy, this is the MINIMUM of what I think is appropriate