dhiren.za.net

Since the shocker on Friday that I would have to pay R4000 to port out from iTalk Cellular, I've been in a very annoyed mood. So I decided to go in person to their head office today to speak to someone face to face, to get them to explain the costs to me. So I went in this morning, before I went to work, hoping to speak to the customer service manager in person. Unfortunately, the customer service manager is on leave, so I spoke to one of the customer service reps instead, and explained what happened, and asked to speak to someone who could give me a complete breakdown of what I'm being charged for. So after a short while, she tracked down David, who happened to be the guy who called me on Friday afternoon. I immediately began to feel somewhat disheartened, as David had reached a point on Friday where he couldn't give me any further answers. But I spoke to him anyways, to try and get any sort of explanation of the charges.

So again, I was told that it is beyond their control, and that it is MTN's fault. The reason being, that MTN pays iTalk a commission when they sign up a new subscriber, as well as pays them for the handset, etc. And if a subscriber terminates their contract early, then MTN reclaims those costs from iTalk, and iTalk reclaims those costs from the subscriber. Or something.

Right. So, with three weeks remaining on my contract, I'm paying back MTN for the full 24 months commission that iTalk received, and the full cost of the handset? Clearly something isn't right here. No, they said... it is calculated somehow. So, lets see. If they are making a calculation based on a pro-rata formula, lets do some rough mathematics here.

I have 3 weeks remaining on a 24 month, or 104 week, contract. So, I have 3/104, or slightly under 3% of my contract period remaining. Lets round that to 3%. So, according to the people I spoke to today, 3% of my contract is worth R4000. Meaning that my contract is apparently worth R135,000 to MTN. That seems somewhat farfetched. David said "what if that really was what it is worth to MTN". Well, I replied, if someone at MTN can show me a breakdown of my account, and show how my 24 month contract can be worth R135,000 to them, then I will be the happiest person on the planet, because it would mean that I am getting R135,000 worth of stuff for just under R4000. Clearly, I am not, and clearly, this is not what MTN does, because if they sunk R131,000 on every contract, they would go out of business quite soon.

So they tried to come up with other explanations - that its not just the monthly subscription that is involved with the contract, there are the subsidised amounts like the handset and whatnot. Which is fine. But it is completely ridiculous to expect me to pay a non-pro-rata amount on any of those things.

It seems to boil down to the fact that MTN pays iTalk a commission per sale, and if the contract gets cancelled early, then iTalk has to pay back the commission. Why I should have to pay this back is beyond me. The whole commission thing is between MTN and iTalk. If iTalk sucks so badly that it makes a customer want to leave, then iTalk rightly deserves to lose that commission, and making an already unhappy customer pay that is a very strange way of trying to resolve the conflict.

It was then put to me that the service providers have to charge these penalty fees to prevent subscribers from porting every 3 months to get a better deal. This is a completely flawed argument, and if anyone in management at iTalk or MTN or anywhere else seems to think that it is a good reason, then they clearly have no clue about anything, and here is why:

If I was to sign up for a new contract and get a new handset, and three months later decide to port somewhere else to get a "better deal", then (in a logical world, without ridiculous penalty fees) I will still have to pay up the remainder of my subscription fees and a pro-rata amount on the cost of my handset. This will most likely completely negate any sort of benefit that I might have derived from some "better deal" at another provider. No-one is going to port out at any time just because they want a better deal. There are remaining contractual obligations that will need to be honoured. And I am more than willing to honour the remainder of my contractual obligation, but nothing more.

What iTalk and MTN management need to realise is that people will most likely port out early because of service. iTalk's service was horrendous enough to make me want to lose some money and port out early to be completely rid of their service. Rather than penalising the unhappy customer with idiotic fees, they should go and figure out why the customer was unhappy in the first place and do something about it.

When I explained my reasons for being unhappy to the two people I spoke to this morning, they seemed quite shocked at how utterly disgusting my treatment by their company had been. He asked what happened when they tried to retain me when I made my first complaint... I had to hold back a laugh, because nobody bothered to make any attempt to retain me when I said I wanted to port, in fact, I was told that that they weren't stopping me at all. The only retention attempt was made when I called to give my one months notice to cancel, not to port.

So David asked me to forward my complaint details to him, so that he can bring it up with his manager. I have no idea what he will be able to achieve by this, but I do hope that it results in iTalk deciding to allow me to port out immediately, and rightfully absorb whatever extortionist fee they expect me to pay for them to MTN.

He said a few times that number portability is new, and so there are still some problems in the system that need to be worked out. I understand this completely. But these problems are between iTalk, MTN and ICASA. They are not my problems. I should not have to pay for those problems. I am just an unhappy customer. iTalk is now making me even more unhappy by making me pay a penalty fee for being unhappy, rather than doing something to make me less unhappy.

Ironically, while sitting there airing my dissatisfaction, I received an sms. When I got to work, I checked my phone: "iTalk offers you the latest in cellular renewal deals...".