MTN operates an ******ionate business and breaches POPI Act

MTN has a ******ionate business model and seems to operate in breach of the POPI Act. I have been a loyal, paying customer from before their commercial launch in 1993 and recently visited a branch to arrange an upgrade on my wife's cellphone contract which is held in may name. I became so frustrated with the process and the lack of competence/training of branch staff that I decided to migrate from contract to prepaid. MTN seems to deliberately make this as difficult as possible. It cannot be done at a branch, it cannot be done over weekends and you have to be prepared to transfer between 3 agents, do multiple security checks for individual agents and hold for longer than an hour for the "retentions" agent (the final step in the process). The duopoly between MTN and Vodacom requires attention from the Competition authorities.

My POPI Act concerns arise from the request to identify myself using thumbprints at the MTN branch. MTN's gathering of this private data (my thumbprints) and then sharing this with a 3rd party reseller would seem to be a breach of the POPI Act which carries ******** sanctions.