You want Loyalty, get a dog!

Why do MTN have Yello Bucks? A loyalty programme, right? Well then, they should give up on it, 'cos it my case, it's engendered anything but loyalty in the brand, in fact, I have vowed that as soon as my current contract is up, I will do anything, but get another contract with them.

I use the MTN app, and whenever I would go in there, I would see this growing Yello Bucks total which I had no idea what to do with (as I'm sure most people don't!), so one day when I accessed the app, a message told me that a number of my Yello Bucks were about to expire and I thought, they're giving me this 'reward' so let me not waste it, and I set about looking at what I could do with them. I eventually decided to swap them for Burger King vouchers, I 'bought' 6 vouchers giving me a total value of R275... the voucher numbers arrived via sms, and a while later I decided to redeem them, and have a free meal at MTN's expense. I placed my Burger King order and tried to redeem the vouchers, a laborious process that requires the voucher numbers to be entered at the till in Burger King.

Lo and behold, Burger King could not authenticate the voucher numbers and after much discussion, and some phoning on their behalf I was told that before they could be redeemed I would need to contact MTN to authenticate them... I phoned, went through the rigmarole of proving I was who I said I was, and explained my story, the operator on the other end listened and accessed their systems, and I was usually advised it had been escalated, or a request had been submitted or whatever was going to transpire, and I would receive a response within 48hrs... never!, not once from the many queries I submitted, did I receive any response from MTN, they promised, they would respond, and I said "Yeah, sure." but what must I do when you don't respond and they would assure me again and again that the 'promised they would respond' but of course, they didn't. When I tried to complain that the service was not up to standard, several times they just cut me off, and obviously hoped that I wouldn't phone again, and if I did that the call would not be routed to them. I have come to the conclusion that MTN and their customer service is pathetic, even measured on South Africa's less that brilliant standard, and the operators at their call centre should be very happy that they have a job, 'cos they certainly have no idea of how the company runs, and what the processes are to handle customer queries, each operator I spoke to came up with a different story regarding what I needed to do, and how I needed to go about doing it, non of them could help me, and I got the distinct impression that their main task was trying to fob me off with some information on how to proceed (any information) and get me off the phone as soon as possible... I was given phone numbers to call that didn't exist, phone numbers that did exist, but were for some department that handled completely different functions and could do nothing for me, dial strings that were going to allow me to sort out my own problems, but again had no function remotely linked to the problem that I had. One time, I obviously got a better than absolutely useless operator who did something and I got an automated case opened number, followed shortly afterwards by case resolved message and shortly after that a case closed message. Yayy... sorted, I went to Burger King read all the numbers, but No!... same conclusion 'not authenticated'.... finally another operator suggested that seeing as the vouchers weren't working that I should just get them reversed and get my 'precious' Yello Bucks back, great idea... she said she had put in the instruction, and I would hear within 48hrs... Yeah!!.... you guessed it, no response, no action, no Yello Bucks, I gave them extra time, and eventually called to see where they were, there was no record (as far as I could tell) of the request, and this operator gave me a different response. Time to face the facts, MTN Customer Service just doesn't exist, it should be called Customer frustration, or Customer aggravation and I have finally decided to cut my losses and give up on it... even though it was never about the money, R275 worth of vouchers earned over many, many years of being a loyal customer was never anything to get excited about, It was about the romantic notion that a loyalty programme and the rewards earned were actually something that a company cared about, rather than a 'must have because everyone else has' and that customer service is actually about helping those loyal customers.

Back to reality... it's ONLY about extracting as much money as possible from their hapless prey, knowing full well that we have no other option but to use them, because they're all as bad as each other, and losing a customer doesn't matter a jot to them, they know that, Vodacom or Cell-C or whoever will be losing just as many dissatisfied customers as they are losing themselves and MTN will be gleefully signing them all up. Swings and roundabouts, swings and roundabouts, at the end of the day they'll just take all your money, and leave you with a headache...