Violation of POPIA by MTN

I am so excited on the eve of the end of my data contract with MTN. The end date is tomorrow, 16 October 2025. As I do not have other ways of communicating directly with MTN as my service providers, I, therefore, will use your reputable platform for that purpose. I am grateful to you for affording customers such an opportunity to communicate with corporate clients. Under normal circumstances, they just bully their clients and get away with it; which is very unfortunate and, indeed, disturbing. For over 15 years, MTN has been my preferred service provider for voice, SMS messages and mobile data on a 24-month contacts. In addition, I had moved my family and friends to MTN as a service provider. From time to time, we have bought gadgets from MTN on contracts as well. It was a long journey. However, it would appear MTN does not care for its clients anymore. Most likely, she is big enough not to care and to ensure clients are subservient to her bullying. It is very unfortunate and that should be condoned. I have always renewed my contracts with MTN using Agents purporting to be from “MTN’s Call Centre”. I had no doubt because the contracts were renewed successfully. Two years ago, towards the end date of my current contract which end tomorrow, 16 October 2025, I received a call from one such “Call Centre Agent”, who advised me to make an “upgrade to my data contract and that of my wife from a from 40GB to 60GB. As the terms appeared lucrative, I opted to go for the upgrade from October 2023 to October 2025. Since then, contracts have been in existence, paying for 60GB data for the 2 contracts, BUT have only data for 40GB for each contract, which was the same for the old contract. Every month I have received notifications that my accounts were credited with 60GB but when I checked balances, it was always 40GB. I visited and reached out to my nearest MTN branch several times and after laughing at me, they advised that they do not use the call centers to renew or upgrade contracts. What is ironic is the that I have paid these two contracts for the last 24 months based on the arrangement made by the same call authorized Call Centre Agent. MTN has consistently invoiced me. To me that did not add up and appear inconsistent. If they do not use Agents from call Centers, naturally the , the tele-contract which I agreed to with the unknown Call Center Agent in October 2023 should not have been valid, and should be reimbursed, if not, then MTN owes me 20GB of data for the past 24 months for the two contracts.

Lastly, there is no platform at MTN for customers to escalate such issues, I only must communicate with MTN managers on this platform, which is very unfortunate for such a Multinational Organization. As my contract ends tomorrow, I recommend that MTN should revisit its relationship with these so called Agents as I feel MTN may be violating the Protection of Personal Information in violation of the POPIA Act of 4 of 2013 in terms of how its clients’ personal information is protected. I say this because the Call Centre Agents, whom MTN claims not to have any relationship with had all my personal information, which to me is a complete violation of POPIA 4 of 2013 as I did not give MTN consent to share the information with these Agent. If she does not share this kind of Personal Information, then MTN’s systems may be very much compromised such that non-affiliated organizations and Agents have unlimited access to MTN clients’ personal information in violation of POPIA.