MTN, Tigo and Star Media keep giving me reasons to take my business elsewhere

What can I say, do we ever learn? We suffer through hopeless customer service and all we do is smile wearily and go back for more. I believe that we are all suffering from a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome. Think I’m wrong? Then how can you explain this; according to figures coming out of the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) building in Kiyovu, by the end of August, the country had 5.09 million mobile subscribers. And as usual, MTN remained market leader with 3.188 million subscribers.This despite the fact that, for the last month or so, the telecom behemoth has accrued fines of Rwf60 million and counting because, as a RURA statement reads, it “decided to issue a confirmation enforcement notice and to impose a penalty to MTN Rwanda over persistently poor quality services”. Everyone has their own ‘poor MTN service’ story. Dropped calls, poor voice quality and snail-pace Internet connectivity comprise my horror stories and I’m sure you can add to my complaints. What I can’t figure out is this, if RURA is getting millions because MTN failed to honor its contractual obligations, then why aren’t we, the customers, getting a coin?I didn’t want to assume the worst i.e. that MTN Rwanda was a greedy, untouchable corporate giant taking its clients for granted, so I asked MTN’s David Kezio Musoke, its public relations honcho, what was going on, when it was going to get fixed and whether they would compensate us, the clients, for the terrible service they’d been rendering. The poor service was, he told me, “mainly due to what was termed as ‘significant number of Call Set Failures and Abrupt Call disconnection’ that results (sic) in frequent dropped calls. You also have to understand that sometimes some technical hitches might be beyond our control like fiber cuts, since we depend on coastal submarine cables. For MTN Rwanda, it is a continual process to upgrade our network. We have made tremendous effort to improve the network and have since received positive growth. In relation with the recent penalties we have done drive tests and within the course of this week we shall submit our report to RURA”.Well, about the compensation for poor service, I was told MTN couldn’t quantify it, which is rather unfortunate.I DO understand that things cannot always run smoothly. However, what I DON’T understand is why a company as big as MTN doesn’t attempt to connect with its clients better. For example, by giving its weary clientele free text messages, because honestly, I would leave MTN if I had a choice. Sadly, I cannot simply because it would be too complicated to do so; I would have to change numbers and then inform everyone about my new contact details. Who has the time for that?I don’t want this to seem like I’m taking a swipe at MTN. I have heard stories of Star Media users being unable to access certain channels they’ve paid for. Tigo, the second biggest telecom, was recently served with a precautionary notice by RURA.The fact of the matter is that we, the consumers, are being taken for granted and there is absolutely nothing we can do. Which leads me to ask, why haven’t we, the consumers, done anything about this? We cannot assume that the government will fight all our battles. I suggest that we use the tools at our disposal, such as social media like Twitter and Facebook, to name and shame the errant companies. We are not without weapons.

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MTN, Tigo and Star Media keep giving me reasons to take my business elsewhere