EARLY WARNING - MTN Service Fails Again

EARLY WARNING

MTN Service Fails Again.


By Nikki Viljoen – Viljoen Consulting April 2009.

In late 1997, I got brave and got my first cell phone, and in doing so dragged myself kicking and screaming into the 20th Century. Then I entered into a contract with MTN. I am still with them. It must be noted however, that I am still with them as it is my opinion that all the cell phone service providers are the same, each one is as bad as the other, so it would not serve any purpose to move to another one at all.

Here’s the thing – we are now in 2009 and in the last 12 years that I have been an MTN client, their shop in Cresta has scored 100% failure rate with me. Yes indeed folks – that is 100% failure rate over a period of 12 years. This means that there has not been a single instance when I have walked into the store with a query or a problem and walked out as a happy and content customer. Not once have they ever been able to assist me when I have asked a question, or asked for information on the products that they sell, or when I have had some sort of problem and needed help. Nada! Nothing – from the sales person upwards, including the Manager/owner.

I am sure that no-body can actually beat that – a consistently achieved 100% failure rate.

Let me share my most recent escapade. On Saturday morning I happened to be in the Northgate mall and I purchased a ‘SamSung’ Blue Tooth thingy type headset that fits on your ear. Too many near misses with the traffic police and talking on the phone . . .

I was assured by the sales person that although my phone is a Nokia, the SamSung device would work. Now this makes perfect sense to me despite the fact that I consider myself a technophobe. You see, I ‘blue tooth’ stuff between my phone and my laptop all the time and my laptop is not a Nokia.

So off I went home, happy as Larry, with my new purchase that needed to be charged for a minimum of 8 hours. So far so good – Ja Right!

The technophobe ‘that’s me’, trying to set up the gadget so that the headset talks to the phone – a disaster waiting for a place to happen. “Not to worry” I thought, “I will get it done at Cresta”. What a bad idea that was!

I walked into the store, explained the problem to a very bored looking sales assistant. Her first response was that the gadget is SamSung and the phone is Nokia. I explained that. She took my phone, played around on it for a few seconds and then asked me ‘how to get connectivity’? I told her that if I knew how to connect everything, I would not be in the store. She glared at me and then informed me that she is ‘not a technician, she is a sales person’! My next question is ‘shouldn’t a sales person know the functionality of their products’?

I asked for the Manager/Owner (the next mistake) – repeated the request for assistance as above and got the same answer regarding the gadget. The Manager/Owner played around on the phone for a few seconds and then told me to ‘try it now and if it doesn’t work then I can’t help you’. Then he walked away.

Great service hey!

I drove all the way back to Northgate to the chap who sold me the gadget and watched in absolute amazement while he connected the gadget to the phone and then tested the connection in all of 30 seconds! Now that’s brilliant service!

To add to this wonderful MTN service, I called MTN to obtain the contact name and details of the Manager or person in charge of the Complaints department, as I wanted to send this particular article to them before I post it on the blog – Thami could not tell me who that was, but took my details, gave me a reference number (47019212) and assured me that he would get back to me. Of course he didn’t!

Phoned again and got Pacama (the spelling here is definitely wrong), who advised that ‘we cannot give out the Managers details’. She also told me that the complaint e-mail address that I was given by Thami (complaints@mtnsp.co.za) is incorrect (why am I not surprised) and that I should use webmaster@mtnsp.co.za – let’s see if that one works.

I am curious to see, what if any response I get from both the e-mail addresses.


Nikki is an Internal Auditor and Business Administration Specialist who can be contacted on 083 702 8849 or nikki@viljoenconsulting.co.za or http://www.viljoenconsulting.co.za