TRYING FOR MORE THAN 6 MONTHS TO CANCEL MTN DATA CONTRACT

After trying to exhaust all possible routes to sort this out with MTN directly (6 months now), I now resort to HelloPeter. I say trying, because mysteriously many numbers I searched and even given by agents is not working - I get messages like "not possible", "number does not exist”. I have literally spend hours-and-hours both in-store and on the telephone to try and sort this out the last 6 months.

In September 2019, I took out a data contract with MTN – it came with a modem. Because it was a big modem and difficult to carry around I put the sim card in a spare phone I am using. The next day I could not connect. After a few hours in the store we figured out that the sim can only be used in the modem and not in any other device. I did not know that this is possible (I had previous data contracts that came with a modem, but NEVER experienced this) and also the staff at the store did not know this.

I then asked for the contract to be cancelled as I was misinformed and it was still within the 5 days cooling off period. The store took the modem back (and it was sold to another customer, I was told later on) and I was informed that the contract has been cancelled and I will be reimbursed for any amount I was charged. I then took out another data contract without a modem and this also caused much more misery and a lot of time and effort to get it to work (I will not go into that now).

I quickly realised that the first contract was not cancelled. The store told me that their part was done as they cancelled the contract and I should contact customer care. When calling customer care I was told that they cannot assist and I need to go back to store as it was there where I took out the contract. For the past 6 months I am trapped in this never ending loop between the store and customer disservice and my contract is still not cancelled.

After my last interactions with the store a few days back, I received a sms to inform me that my case has been resolved. When I called in with the reference number I was diverted to retentions. I was then told that I will need to pay cancellation fees etc. to cancel and no refund. I then spend another few fruitless hours to try and get this addressed. Again the store blames customer service and customer service blames the store. I was again given a few numbers to try – some which did not exist and others that rang for an eternity, just to be told that they cannot assist.

This is the short version. I can give more of the same as during the last 6 months I regularly tried to resolve this.