Persistent refusal to respect clients preference to not receive marketing calls

5 Years ago, I decided I don't like being tied to 2 year contracts with MTN. I prefer to pay for my own phones and have the freedom to cancel my contract at 1 months notice.

Unfortunately, MTN seems completely unwilling or incapable of accepting this. I receive calls from their staff every few weeks making offers to get me to sign up for another two year contract. Each time, I explain my preference and request that they stop calling me to offer upgrades. When they called me a few weeks back, I lost my temper with the person. After hanging up, I calmed down and called MTM customer care and made a very polite request that they honour my preference to not be bothered with routine marketing calls.

To my utter dismay, I received yet another call asking me to sign a 2 year contract a couple of hours ago.

I don't know how many times I have been called by MTN and requested that they withhold future calls. It would not surprise me if it was as many as 50 times in the 5 years since I opted to not carry on signing 2 year contracts.

I am not sure whether my understanding of the POPI act is correct. As I understand it, the act requires companies to give clients the ability to opt out of receiving calls such as these. We live in a world in which we are burdened by constant SPAM from the many companies that refuse to pay attention to the preferences of many who prefer not to receive these calls. With regards to persistent SPAM calls, my experience of MTN has been far worse than any other company.

I now give up and will be porting my number to an alternate provider the next time I receive such a call from MTN.