Tunde Ajaja
He sounded distraught as he narrated his displeasure to our correspondent that morning.
Mr. Adeyemi Linus, a peasant farmer in
Bayeku, an agrarian community in Ibadan, Oyo State, woke up that morning
to realise it was his grandson’s birthday. Hoping to be one of the
first people to wish the 17-year-old a happy birthday, Linus grabbed his
phone to check how much airtime he had as he rose slowly from bed.
With a balance of N26.58k on his phone,
he pulled out the N500 he had tucked under his pillow the previous
night, grabbed the closest of his shirts and rushed out into the street
to buy airtime so he could share the “joy of the special day” with his
“adorable” grandchild, before going to the farm.
Linus bought N400 MTN recharge card,
hoping it would enable him to make his call and still have a little left
to make a few other calls. Anticipating an exciting conversation with
his grandson as he made his way back to his house, he whistled as he
loaded the card. Time check was 8:30am.
Just as he settled into the sofa in
front of his house to initiate the call, he received four messages
consecutively. He told our correspondent that he almost ignored the
messages because he was in a hurry to make the call but that he
grudgingly clicked on the first message, which left him deflated
afterwards.
He recalled, “I was shocked to see that
N200 had been deducted from my airtime as subscription fees for some
services that I never subscribed to. It was as if I was dreaming because
I did not subscribe to anything. All I do with the phone is to make
calls and read messages, most of which are from MTN without my asking
for them. I had noticed similar deductions from my airtime in the past
and that was why I rarely recharge the phone because they bill me for
several things that I don’t know about.
“Each of the four messages cost N50 so I
lost N200 just like that. The first message gave me health tips, the
second one gave me reasons why I should do exercise; the third one said
my caller tune had been renewed and the fourth was about ‘tips to make
money from the comfort of your home,’ and I never applied or subscribed
to any of them.
“I had called the customer care many times but they kept assuring me they had deactivated it, yet they kept billing me.”
Apparently confused about the
development, Linus recalled that he read the messages several times,
hoping he received them in error and his money would be returned. But
just as he was slowly reconciling himself with the “strange billing” and
made to “quickly make the call before they removed the remaining,”
another message came in, saying his monthly subscription for “twitter
goodie bag had successfully been renewed at N100.”
“At that juncture, I felt like throwing
the phone away. My dear friend, I never subscribed to anything and I
wonder why MTN should do that. I had to quickly switch off my phone and
remove the battery so I could save the remaining amount.
“Fortunately, moments later, I switched
it on and I quickly called the boy. I spoke for about four minutes 35
seconds when I heard “one minute remaining.” I thank God that they even
allowed me to make the call, even though it was shorter than I planned.
By the time I finished, I had N2.56k. I was angry but there was nothing I
could do. These days, I only recharge when I need to make call.”
Linus’ experience might sound strange
but such is the reality of many mobile telecoms subscribers in Nigeria
today, whereby mobile telecom operators, including Glo, MTN, Etisalat
and Airtel charge them for services they never subscribed to.
Many mobile phone users who spoke to Saturday PUNCH lamented
that they had been surcharged by their network providers, usually for
things they knew nothing about. They explained that even though the
introduction of GSM service in the country has been a blessing, they
have equally had bitter experiences that had almost robbed them of the
joy that it brought them initially.
Telecoms in Nigeria, a bitter-sweet experience
When the Global System for Mobile
communication was introduced in Nigeria in 2001, the joy and excitement
that greeted its arrival was historic and unequalled. It was like a
breakthrough from the primitive days, when people went through harrowing
experiences before they could make use of telephone services.
Then, people largely made use of
rechargeable NITEL card and they had to visit telephone booths to make
calls, and some of the few subscribers observed that what was obtainable
then was a system characterised by frustration, pronounced
dissatisfaction and poor service delivery. But since the introduction of
the GSM, efficiency and comfort became affordable.
Therefore, in the opinion of many, the
advent of GSM did not only sweeten communication experience, it was like
a migration from an old order, more so that shortly after the
commencement of GSM services, the arrival of Econet Nigeria (now Airtel)
and MTN in the same 2001 and Glo’s entry in 2003 made the experience a
sweet one. The advent of smartphones also gave Nigerians more reasons to
appreciate the development some more.
But few years down the line, many
subscribers describe their experience with their network providers as
frustrating and one plagued with a mix of instantaneous joy and
remarkable sadness. Impliedly, the pleasant experience people once had
has been taking a sharp descent for the worse.
They noted that apart from the declining
quality of service and the frustration that often accompanies it, most
of the network service providers had devised ways of cheating them.
These, consumers said, range from unsolicited ringback tunes and tips on
various subjects, monthly deductions for subscriptions they never
initiated, news alerts to undelivered SMS without refund and sometimes
promo offers.
They said even when they complain, the
usual response they often get from the customer care of the respective
network providers is ‘system error’ while they (consumers) kept losing
money. According to some consumers, even when they send the stipulated
command to end a service or they complain to the customer care officers
of the affected operator, they would be assured that the problem had
been resolved while it persists.
This is perhaps one of the reasons why
Akinyemi Janet had yet to forgive MTN for debiting her of N8,000 when
she travelled to the United States on a short visit few weeks ago. She
recalled that before she left the country, she recharged her phone to
the tune of N8,000 so as to have something to rely on in case of
emergency.
But shortly after her arrival at the
airport, she said she saw a brief message on her phone that N1,500 had
been deducted from her account but that before she could read the
message it had disappeared. “After a 12-hour flight, I was too tired to
check it or bother myself about it. I thought it might have something to
do with the change of environment,” she said.
Janet, who had been strained by the jet
lag, sprang to life when she tried to call her parents back home and she
was told she didn’t have sufficient credit to make a call. She
continued, “Initially, I felt it was bad network, so I kept trying.
Since the response persisted, I checked my balance to see what was
happening. To my greatest surprise, my credit balance was N0.02k. I
screamed!
“I knew it couldn’t be real, so I
switched off the phone to see if it would come back, but it never came
back. To avoid a repeat of same, I refused to recharge my phone until I
came back.”
Out of anger, Janet said one of the
first calls she made on arriving Nigeria was to the customer care and
that she was told that the money was for her internet connection.
She continued, “Before I left Nigeria, I
subscribed to the normal N1,000 Blackberry Internet Service on my
Blackberry and they never touched my airtime. But when I got the US,
they left my data and started deducting from my airtime. And
interestingly, I wasn’t even browsing when they deducted the money. Even
if I was browsing, do they charge N500 per kilobyte for me to have
exhausted N8,000 within five minutes. Till date that money is gone and
they expect me to forget about it.
“As if that was not enough, my Airtel
SIM did the same thing the day I came back. I bought a new smartphone
and inserted the SIM. I recharged with N2,000 airtime, hoping to
subscribe for data the following day, but before the next morning,
everything was gone. When I called the customer care line, I was told
that since I didn’t subscribe for data, they had to deduct from my
airtime, even when I didn’t browse or download anything. Since then, I
have not recharged the line and that is the way it will be.”
Like Janet, Chika Ezeobi is definitely not happy with his network provider, MTN, at the moment. He told Saturday PUNCH
that following the company’s promo, called ‘cash quest promo’ for which
subscribers were charged N100 daily with the promise that they could
win cash prize, a sport utility vehicle or electronics, he had been very
angry with his network provider.
Ezeobi, a student who was hoping to hit a
jackpot through his daily subscription, said having done the
subscription for a number of weeks, he had to visit the closest customer
care office to find out the date of the draw.
A distressed Ezeobi said he was shocked
beyond words when a customer care officer at a retail centre told him
the programme had ended since August 8, while his money was still being
deducted in November.
He said, “I was shocked and disappointed
on hearing that because it was fraudulent. If the promo had ended, why
were they still deducting my money? The person who attended to me said I
should have been following the promo to know when it ended. And I
wondered if it was not left to them to discontinue the deductions when
it ended.
“When I called the customer care line,
the person who spoke to me apologised. I asked if my money would be
refunded, he said MTN wouldn’t be able to do so because it was a system
error. I felt scandalised and till date, I lost thousands of naira to
them. If you multiply that by the number of persons that could have
suffered the same fate, it could be running into millions. That is not
fair.”
Unlike Ezeobi who actually subscribed to
the service for which he was being charged, Kingsley said he had never
subscribed to caller tunes on his Glo network, yet he has a fuji song as his ringback tune for which N50 is deducted from his account every month.
Like Kingsley, another angry subscriber,
Desmond, is yet to forgive Airtel and Glo for the amount of money he
said he had lost to the “sharp practices” of the operators. He noted
that apart from relationship tips and news update from CNN, he had been forced to pay N100 monthly to renew Twitter Goodie Bag that
he never subscribed to. He added that in spite of the repeated calls to
the customer care and the assurance that it had been cancelled, Glo
kept deducting the N100 till two years after.
“The deduction started in April, 2013
and immediately I complained to the customer care portal they gave me a
code to send. I must have sent that code for about 1,000 times but it
never stopped. I went to their outlet, they promised to stop it but they
didn’t, until September 2015.
“They also send me relationship tips, CNN news
update, all at a cost to me. Painfully, when you tell them to stop it,
they won’t even if they promise to.” The myriad of complaints from
subscribers can be overwhelming. Some lamented that after exhausting
their browsing data, the operators, without notifying them, start
deducting from their airtime. Desmond is also not happy that his N50 is
being deducted for relationship tips every two weeks by Airtel. “I even
bought an Etisalat line, hoping it would be free from these illegal
deductions, but they are all the same. Eventually, I have had to drop
the two other lines to endure MTN’s service. They are all the same, and
it is so painful,” he added.
Findings showed that many subscribers
have had to buy more than one SIM card from different operators to
reduce their losses and with the hope of getting an improved service
from another if one was deficient.
Since Moyin Akinbami travelled to the
United Kingdom sometime last year, she said Glo had been deducting an
unspecified amount from her airtime when she did not subscribe to any
service. She said, “The Mumu Comic Service is against my wish and it is
distributed under the 55501 portal. It can be up to five times a day,
starting from 12 midnight, and Glo has refused to unsubscribe me from
the service. I keep my Glo line alive by having airtime sent to me on a
regular basis, but Glo systematically drains everything through
unsolicited messages, spurious calls and many others. Does the NCC still
think it’s only MTN that deserves a fine?”
Beyond the “illegal” deduction of
subscribers’ airtime, other complaints lodged by the subscribers include
unsolicited messages and unwanted calls from the networks, such as
55990 or 7571 for Glo, 08034100 or 0757 for MTN, 08090334069 for
Etisalat, 39922227 for Airtel, etc, call jam or interruption, delay in
connection, false messages, among others.
Telecoms, a growing initiative
Between July 2014 and September 2015,
the number of active lines, including mobile and Code Division Multiple
Access, known as CDMAs in the country has risen from 132,186, 840 to
150,660,631 out of a population of about 170 million Nigerians.
As of September 2015, MTN has 62,493,732
subscribers (representing 2.1 per cent increase since the third quarter
of 2014), Globacom has 31,306,472 (representing 4.81 per cent increase
within the same period), Airtel has 31,134,625 (representing 4.08 per
cent increase within the same period) while Etisalat has 23,492,214
(representing 5.36 per cent increase within the same period).
Furthermore, the number of telephone
subscribers per 100 individuals living within an area (Teledensity)
passed 100 per cent for the first time to stand at 103.9 per cent, which
points to the fact that more Nigerians are embracing the use of mobile
phones. This is even more so, going by the information that Nigerians
spend about N212bn monthly on internet subscriptions while the country’s
telecom revenue is also estimated to have surpassed $20bn in 2015.
Given that the average revenue per user
is $6 at N196.79 to a dollar, this gives N1,181.82 as the ARPU monthly.
When this is multiplied by the number of 150,660,631 active users as of
September 2015, according to NCC, the amount spent on airtime monthly by
active subscribers in Nigeria is given as N178bn monthly. Thus, given
the many ways operators surcharge their subscribers, a part of this
might account for the over $20bn recorded by the industry in 2015.
An evaluation by Wikipedia in
2014 had shown that Nigeria ranks as the seventh country in the world
with the highest number of mobile phones in use, with about 167,371,945
mobile phones and over 90 million internet users.
An expert in Information Technology, who
spoke under the condition of anonymity, averred that given the barrage
of complaints from many of these subscribers, there are indications that
many subscribers are dissatisfied with their network providers, most of
whom, he said, appear to have benefitted from unduly surcharging their
customers.
He noted that if unchecked, the network
providers would continue to enrich themselves illegally by subjecting
their customers to discomfort. “It is fraudulent for network providers
to charge people for services they never requested for, and when they
complain, they promise to stop it but they don’t.
“In some cases, there is even no
information as to how to unsubscribe and if you call them, it takes them
forever to connect the calls. This means any busy individual might have
to endure the extortion. A similar one is the promo offers. Even though
it is optional and there are always terms and conditions, many people
don’t bother to read through, so, the blame on that is equitable,” he
explained.
The dissatisfaction of consumers with
their service providers was further strengthened by a survey conducted
in December 2015 by NOIPolls, a country-specific polling service in the
West African region to develop opinion research in Nigeria. The survey
revealed that in spite of the continuous rise in the number of
subscribers and the increase in the usage of dual lines, there is a
general decline in consumers’ satisfaction with services being provided
by the various GSM operators.
Findings of the survey, a copy of which
was received by our correspondent, showed that many subscribers say they
are not getting value for their money from the operators, and the
reasons consumers adduced for this include high tariff, poor network
service, poor promotions, poor customer service and undue credit
deductions, which they said have compelled them to have more than one
SIM card with the hope of enjoying a complementary service.
Notably, the percentage of people using
two lines has risen from 39 per cent in 2012 to 49 per cent in 2015,
with majority still left dissatisfied. Findings also showed that some
subscribers have dropped or abandoned their SIM cards and left them
inactive because of poor service delivery and what they term extortion,
which also accounts for revenue loss for the operators. A report had put
the potential revenue loss from inactive lines at over N50bn monthly.
“For instance, almost half (46 per cent)
of the subscribers who use MTN as their main line think they are not
getting value for money from this provider in 2015, although slightly
more than half (54 per cent) of the subscribers believe they are getting
value for money from this provider in 2015. However, this figure
represents a six-point decline from the 60 per cent satisfaction it had
in 2014,” the report added.
The poll notes further that even though
MTN topped the chart as the operator that provides the best services in
2015, a large number of its subscribers say they are not getting value
for their money. Perhaps, the subscribers’ complaints tilted more
against MTN, because, according to the survey, 88 per cent of mobile
network subscribers use MTN either as their main line or as a
supplementary line.
Similarly, the level of satisfaction of
Etisalat subscribers seems to have declined, according to the
respondents, as its rating by its consumers dropped from 97 per cent in
2013 to 65 per cent in 2015.
According to the survey, 15 per cent of
Etisalat subscribers said they didn’t get value for their money because
of undue credit deduction, as compared to Glo’s 12 per cent, MTN’s nine
per cent and Airtel’s seven per cent.
According to the report, between 2012
and 2015, the percentage of MTN subscribers who said they got value for
their money dropped from 57 per cent to 54 per cent, that of Airtel
dropped from 72 per cent in 2012 to 52 per cent in 2015 and that of
Etisalat drops from 78 per cent to 65 per cent, unlike Glo’s rating that
rose from 63 per cent to 69 per cent within the same period.
The NOIPolls urged the Nigerian
Communications Commission to ensure that consumers continue to have
access to high quality telecommunications service by setting basic
minimum quality levels for all operators. “With a sample of the size we
employed, we can say with 95 per cent confidence that the results
obtained are statistically precise – within a range of plus or minus
three per cent,” it adds.
The slippery road to a better telecom service
Most of the mobile network providers
have often blamed the network problems that consumers experience on high
operating cost and infrastructural deficit, such as poor power supply,
which they said makes them to spend more of their income on recurrent
expenditure. They had explained that this had not enabled them to focus
on other areas that could make their service delivery better.
According to them, given the nature of
the service they render, which must be on and stable at every time of
the day, they have had to rely on generators which they said cost a lot
of money to maintain.
It was gathered that the telecoms
companies spent about N45bn monthly (N540bn per annum) to power their
Base Transceiver Stations in 2014, and given the increasing number of
the stations and the likely increase in maintenance and personnel cost
across the country, the cost incurred by the respective operators might
have increased.
The Executive Secretary, Association of
Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria, Mr. Gbolahan Awonuga,
had said recently that operators providing 4G internet service were the
largest consumers of diesel in the country. Notably, diesel costs about
N150 per litre. Given the number of subscribers in the country and the
prevalent poor power supply, which operators have identified as a
bottleneck, Nigerians might have to endure these issues and other
shortcomings of the service providers for a longer time. Some experts in
the industry have however said there was need for more base stations
across the country. They noted that the about 30,000 base stations as of
the end of 2014 were not enough to cater for the about 150 million
connected lines.
The former Minister of Communications
Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, had said that Nigeria needs at least
60,000 base stations by 2018 to overcome the poor quality service in the
sector, noting that the rate of growth of the stations had slowed down.
She pointed out that epileptic power
supply, security risk, high cost of setting up the stations and
maintenance, vandalism, stealing of equipment, delay in approval by the
government have all negatively affected the growth of base stations in
the country. Some consumers told Saturday PUNCH that the
network providers might have been surcharging them to be able to meet up
with their operating cost and boost their revenue.
Reacting to the issues raised about the
service providers, the spokesperson for the NCC, Mr. Tony Ojobo, told
our correspondent that the NCC has a platform through which subscribers
could make their complaints, saying “complaints are treated as they
come.” He added that the mobile number portability was introduced to
give subscribers an opportunity to make a choice among the service
providers.
He said, “Anyone who has complaints
should complain to the network provider and in case they don’t get any
redress, they should call our complain desk on 622 and supply the
reference number that was given to them by the network provider, which
indicates that they have already complained and nothing has been done.
And we will take it up from there.”
On the issue of unsolicited messages, he
said, “Even though some of the messages are advisory and could be
beneficial to subscribers, what we have done is to ensure that they
provide options for people to opt out and most of them have complied
with that.”
Speaking on the inadequacy of base
stations, Ojobo identified the issues confronting the deployment of base
stations to include security challenges, community restiveness and
multiple demands, approval from states and multiple taxes, noting that
the NCC had initiated discussions with the Nigerian Governors’ Forum to
draw their attention to some of the challenges being experienced by
operators in their states.
Also reacting, the spokesperson for
Airtel, Emeka Opara, said across the world, operators normally send
messages to customers to inform them of new services. He added, “The
only issue there is the message hits you when you are not expecting it
and some of them come in at such times like midnight because of network
issues, but I admit that it is wrong to harass customers with messages,
especially at late hours. I’m a customer as well, so I feel it.”
About the illegal subscription and
deductions, he said any man-made system was prone to error and
malfunctioning but that when a customer comes with a genuine complain,
the tradition is to respond to them accordingly.
He said, “These networks were not built
by God but by man, which is prone to mistakes, errors and unintended
developments. However, if your credit has been illegally deducted, go to
any Airtel shop or call the customer care and ask them to stop it and
if they don’t you have a right to complain.
“As a business, we do not set out to
annoy or exploit our customers. However, sometimes people complain
because they do not even know what they have done or what anyone else,
like their children, could have done with their phones. Regardless, we
do everything possible to resolve any complaints that come.”
Meanwhile, efforts made to get Etisalat
to respond were not successful as the spokesperson did not reply the
mail she promised to send, while MTN and Glo also did not reply the
mails sent to them.
0 comments:
Post a Comment