One incident is enought to terminate a relationship

My phone was ****** on Monday afternoon – and it left me with a sickly, violated feeling. Sadly, I must say however, that dealing with your organisation to try and get my sim swopped has wholly eclipsed the negative emotions of the crime itself.

Over the last few days, I have experienced an unmatched level of apathy from the individuals I’ve dealt with and idiocy of the systems involved (At one point, I was told that my sim swop had been suspended because I hadn’t responded to a confirmation SMS sent. Are you kidding me?!?).

I have spent too much time in-store over the last few days. When I spoke to the person who initially ‘activated’ my card and informed him that his colleague had just told me that he had never activated the card to begin with, he merely shrugged and told me he couldn’t remember, and someone else would help me (after making me wait for him to come out of the back room where I could see him having a grand old time with his colleagues).

I was then told that it would take another two to 24 hours before my phone would be active. Only when I insisted (read – kicked up a fuss!) that this be dealt with now and asked to speak to the manager, was I informed that it had been activated but was pending approval because I had not responded to the above-mentioned SMS. I was then told that it would probably be sorted in the next hour.

When I insisted once again that it be dealt with now, I was told that there was no way because it was handled by someone in Pakistan. I asked to please speak to a human being at head office to escalate the complaint/make a plan because I could not go another day without my phone – which is the lifeline to my work – the manager then disappeared into the back to make a call to head office (after insisting over and over again that there was no one she could call). During this time, I was serenaded by the symphony of conversation from the staff behind the counter, bantering back and forth about how much they wished they didn’t have to get up this morning and how they would love to be home right now. When the manager came back, I was told that she’d spoken to someone at the 14th avenue office and there was nothing more they could do. I would just have to wait.

The customer care email service was just as helpful. I contacted them when the 24-hour time frame had lapsed, and my phone had still not been activated. I was asked for my sim card number and instructed to phone a number to activate it. When I rep**** that I could not call as my sim was not activated, I received the same reply again – to please phone the activation number to sort it out. When I complained about this – I received no response at all.

As you can imagine, I’m fuming right now and will not be renewing my contract with MTN again based on this one event (although the one incident involved dealing with six different individuals – Sbonelo Mathe, Thuli Mokane, Sauda Omar, Nokhuthala Khoza, Thembisile Sithole, and the unnamed individual from the 14th Avenue office). If at any stage, any one of the individuals I have dealt with had just leaned in, tried to make a plan, make it happen, show a little genuine customer care, this would be a very different kind of email.

Regards,

Bronwyn