Newly Crowned Rogue Telecom in Ghana goes to Airtel

The uproar is getting higher and higher. Customers aren’t settling for nonsense these days. The tension keeps rising and the complaints, queries, bad reviews, outcry and distress levels are skyrocketing.

Customers are being cheated, over and over again. No one seems to care, no one seems to bother. All appear normal, yet it ain’t normal. For about 2 months now, the worst network service to, perhaps, ever surface in Ghana is in full swing, and no sign of stopping, at least incoming info reveals.

The so-called Smartphone Network, a network designed to make you Feel Free, with a logo look similar to an inflated red curled balloon, is in big mess at the moment, and they are enjoying the mess they’re causing, for themselves and their users.

If you’ve been cheated by Airtel, one of Ghana’s finest Telecoms (used to!) in recent times, you are not alone. Loyal customers keep flocking to the official homepage of Airtel on Facebook, where they handle pretty much about 98% of their customer care service. 98%? That might be exaggeration, but how well can one put it, if the average caller to the 100 toll free line, trying to reach out to the Customer Care spends over 40 minutes waiting?

Conversely, post a message to the Facebook page, and you’re sure to receive one of these:
“We apologize for the inconvenience caused. Please send us your number and we will resolve the issue.”

Sweet! You’re a fool, so you go ahead, and send in your phone number. Quickly, you get a response your issue has been logged, and you will be notified when it is resolved. You’re a happy man or woman! Not so fast.

With such swift response from your beloved network, you wished it could have been that quick, trying to know your stance whether you stand the chance of entering heaven or not. Maybe you jump here and there, excited, feeling proud of being heard. You are so thankful, and quickly share how you’ve been well received by this heaven-sent network.

Fast forward to 2 billion years, and you have neither received progress report from Airtel, nor have your issue been resolved. What at all was your problem? Simple:

You tried subscribing to Airtel Sika Kokoo Service, which is priced so reasonable that, I doubt who doesn’t join that in Ghana yet. Just 1 Cedi for a data bundle of 750 Mb, nothing even on the international market is likely to beat that, I believe.

The subscription went through, your credit was deducted efficiently. As a network that’s known to ‘always work’, you didn’t bother verifying if the service subscribed for was provided you. You hope onto YouTube to watch the latest Adele Music Video, “Hello”, which is already rocking over 300 Millions views in less than a week. Obviously, you don’t wanna be left out of the fun.

Your page keeps loading, and loading! Well, what did I do wrong. Then the light-bulb comes on. “Dang! I’ve been duped”, you say. I’m sorry, but not yet.

That incident led you to get in touch with Airtel over the phone. You spent over an hour on the line, no one picked up. One time, you got fortunate, someone did, but guess what, you were too boring he/she cut the line before you could say the next word. You promised yourself you’re never gonna go through that war-zone-like treatment to get in touch with Airtel, thus the Facebook, which seemed like a chilled coconut juice in the middle of the Kalahari!

The above scenario is a true life story. It happened to me a couple of times. I’m a living legend for overcoming that. Okay, I tap my shoulder, and Hi-five myself.

You’re experiencing something similar or worse to above experience? You are not alone! Subscribing for a service, and being refused to enjoy value for money service is irritating, especially if your line of work depends on such service, like internet data. But when Airtel takes your money, they never want to give it back. In fact, you might have to do one or more of these to get your problem heard. Either move a mountain into the sea, or a lighter-tasked one, walk into the Airtel headquarters to demand your money.

Demand money? I doubt they’ll even give to you. But how come I got mine refunded? Hmm…. The secret recipe to that was patience, persistence, and a bit of being serious. Trust me, Airtel won’t give you the money they illegally take back, unless you give them a reason to.

I gave them a reason to, and I meant every word of it. Although I got my refund, I believe if Airtel respected any of their customers, they wouldn’t wait for them to ask for refund of their money when rogue, and unscrupulously taken. At least, for the benefit of the doubt, Airtel could also have decided to freely give out bonus credits, of say, 5 cedis to every subscriber, to at least appease the damage they did, and will cause.

But for Airtel, its a big no! As a poor customer, the best option I had was to sue Airtel in court, and maybe rake in some maybe 10,000$ as damages cost? That would be pretty awesome.

Instead of fixing their network issues, behold above! Android Lollipop, and so what?

But considering the expose regarding the judiciary system in Ghana released by Anas, it would take me two-fold of that damages cost, to even get my sue case rolling. To maintain the rolling speed? Oooh I would need to make a call to World Bank. I won’t say I’m calling from Ghana though, considering our track record of squandering money, and zeal to be irrational when cash is on the table.

And so, the best I could do is raise awareness, get a unified voice, and hopefully, when the whole world knows Airtel has deliberated gone douche, rogue, unprofessional and foolish, maybe the other networks might use the opportunity to worsen their services too, so that Ghana could keep drowning in the pool of crazy network services.

With that in mind, I shared a short Open Letter with Airtel on their Facebook page. I was expecting a billion likes by now, but heck, I got just over 5, which isn’t bad, considering when people are angry, the urge to ‘like’ things aren’t instinctive.

So, below, I share my Open Letter with everyone on here. What do you think? Will Airtel refund all the tens of thousands of Cedis they’re directly, and intentionally stealing from customers one day? If so, when? If not, what will, and should you do, assuming you don’t wanna use any other network?

Lemme know in the comments section below!

Link to Open Letter: https://www.facebook.com/AirtelGH/posts/1070355916310224

• Airtel is unprofessional (or has gone unprofessional. Not the network I knew when I signed on in 2008):
• a) Instead of informing their users about internet issues they have, they don’t, do so intentionally, and have no sense of remorse, when that causes inconveniences for their users. I could established this point, based on the fact that, when they had network issues with their network about 2 weeks ago, I only knew about it when I called them. Their excuse was, the issue was minor, and would be fixed within about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, it had lasted several hours, and was devouring customers who were trying to subscribe kokoo money, for absolutely no reasons.
• b) Airtel always has issues with their network settings. Sometimes it comes back and all subscriptions are reset. All of that happens without the user’s knowledge. And because Airtel rides on the fact that, by using the “internet issues” excuse, they can get many users to ease up and understand them, is exploiting thousands, if not millions of their customers. They ALWAYS have internet issues every 2-3 weeks. If you’re a constant airtel user, you’ll know that. The sad part is, the network neither gets faster, nor better after whatever issues they have solved.
• Airtel is NOT willing to refund your money: This I also established and clear from how the refund process is setup. Users don’t call a representative to subscribe for airtel sika kokoo. However, if your money is stolen by the system, instead of letting the system automatically refund, they want you to call customer care. This might seem a good way, but look at it this way: You call customer care, spend 40 minutes waiting on the line, your call is picked, you get a complaint ticket and you’re told it’ll be fixed in 6 hours time. It never gets fixed. Because they know you won’t have time to follow up on that, they take the money. Might appear small 1 cedi, but if happens to 1,000 users, that’s free 100 Cedis for Airtel. If it happens to a million users in a week, that’s 1 million cedis per week, free of charge, for services not provided. See it as unwillingly donating money to Airtel for no cause!
• Airtel DOESN’T care about us, NOR respect Customers: Just like any other network provider out there in Ghana, Airtel has no respect whatsoever for their customers. I’m not referring to the saying “We apologize” or speaking humbly to the customers that is the full scope of what respect is or entails. If you respect someone you serve, and they are in trouble for something you caused, you try to resolve whatever inconveniences they face as soon as possible, in matter of hours. You don’t cause the sinking of the ship, and return 2 weeks later with life support balloons and rescue boats. That to me, is disrespect. If you respect your customers, you won’t allow (condone) your system stealing money from them by looking at the issue, and smiling at it for months. If you respect and care for your customers, you won’t lie and tell them, “It’ll be fixed within 6 hours” when you explicitly either don’t know how long it’ll take to fix, or the fact that, it won’t be fixed.