The MTN Maze

Dear MTN

Please let us have your correct customer service number. Each time I call 135, I get through to a circus. And it's not even  entertaining.

You remind me so of Mr Zuma at his scintillating best. Just like his "Listen carefully", your "Please pay attention to our menu items" is followed by the purest gobbledygook available on the planet.

I am not interested in mobile money or any of the other treasures on offer. I just so desperately want to ask a breathing human being why the internet is suddenly not available, even after one of your technicians 'fixed' the problem for a few hours. That option (human conversation) is not on the menu, as far as I can discern.

Your recorded message tells me that you are improving your IVR (or something) - an automated service that I landed up at every time, regardless of menu choice. This would happen after a mind-bending journey through many-layered, intriguing but useless menu options. Why don't you just improve your service, period? You do realize that these Monty Python experiences are what send people postal or into institutions.

I eventually chose the fraud option and got to speak to a human being. At least, I think she was human. I asked her how one gets to speak to a human at MTN. "Dial 0 after 135". Why not include that among the menu items? Of course, it didn't work, but took me, to my delight, back into the mysterious MTN maze.

As your service seems to be based on the government model, let me quote:

"Consistent energy availability will ultimately lead to the end of loadshedding"

Well, consistent internet availability will ultimately lead to the end of frustration. 

The same message to you, as to our caring government departments. We are customers, not supplicants at your temples of indifference, inefficiency and buffoonery.

A postscript: many calls later, I was informed that there had been an unauthorized intrusion at a nearby tower. I was relieved that it was not an authorized intrusion. It would have been helpful to know that sooner, instead of fiddling around. But then again, I suppose  technicians work in mysterious ways. As, it seems, do our service providers. Incidentally, the problem is not a major one, I was told. That would explain why it's for only two days that I don't have internet. I imagine that we'd be looking at two years for a major problem.

Yours in the struggle to find real service.

Richard 

Tips for the blogger gratefully accepted 

Capitec Bank, South Africa  

1378565477

O Tichmann 

+27 833970723