Poor client service and long waiting period for warranty assessment

Good Day,

I am writing this on behalf of my father the contract holder HH Steyn ( ********** )

After upgrading to an iphone 7 (128g) in March 2017 the cellphone battery was giving issues from the beginning.

We took his phone back to the MTN store in Kolonade Mall in July 2017 for assistance. They took it in for a warranty assessment. According to them it would only take approx 2 weeks for it to be finalised. But after enquiry at the store there were no action taken yet after 3 weeks. It took nearly 3-4 weeks for a courier to collect the phone for assessment, after this it was then sent back because "find my iphone was not off".

As you can imagine a lot of frustration was experienced as this in fact meant that nearly 2 months went past with no action taken due to something I believe shouldve been able to have been solved remotely and without having wasted time to send the phone back to Kolonade.

When we received the phone back to turn off find my iPhone it was impossible as the phone was completely dead and couldn't be turned on when then refilled the assessment papers and sent the phone back for a second time hoping to find a quick resolve for this very basic issue. At this time we received very rude service at the MTN Kolonade branch and the manager at that time in Sept 2017 was not at all friendly and helpful and made us feel that we were causing the problem.

We then waited another month or more before we called to get feedback.

Belinda Lombaard (friendly and helpful) currently manager at the branch in Kolonade then assisted us. She informed us that the phone now has an approval number and we can get a new phone. She also informed us that the IPhone 7 was out of stock and is discontinued and that they will not receive it again due to the new IPhone 8 being released just a few days earlier. She then advised us that she would compare how much an IPhone 8 would cost us on the current contract. She then emailed me back advising that it would only cost us R 15 once off extra for the IPhone 8 (256 GB) on the current contract. We accepted this offer, but yet again the store did not have stock. We then waited until the store had stock, still under the agreement of the R 15 once off payment. On the 23/11/2017 the store called to let us know that they have the phone in stock and that we can come and collect and that it is still R15 once off payment. When we got there on the 25/11/2017 the story has changed and now we have to pay in R 1500 for the phone due to changes in the Rand value??????????????? This was not the agreement we had and we were not informed prior to coming to collect the phone.

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE AND WE ARE NOT GOING TO ACCEPT THIS!!!!!. Mr HH Steyn has been a client of MTN for almost more than 20 years and this is the service you provide your loyal clients?????

We have waited for 5 months to get a replacement phone and had the inconvenience to cope with and old phone while paying for an iPhone 7.

Could you please rectify this, we would please want MTN to keep to the agreement of the IPhone 8 (256GB) for R 15 once off payment. It is not acceptable to go back on your word.

If this is not solved, we would have to consider leaving MTN, Service is poor and clients do not get treated properly!!!

Please could you give urgent attention to this matter as it is UNACCEPTABLE!!!!

Kind Regards