WEDNESDAY BOYCOTT

Airtel Zambia this week showed arrogance and ignorance when over 15,000 subscribers boycotted Airtel services. Instead of responding to the specific issues that the subscribers raised, which were communicated to them and were also aired on radio, television, in the newspaper as well as on the internet, it was interesting to note that all Airtel management could say was, “we will call you back” and in another instance all they could say was “we value the opinions of our subscribers.

Indeed, everyone’s opinion is to be valued and there’s is no law against that. But when you are dealing with a group of subscribers who pay you for a service, it is no longer an issue of opinion, but an entitlement of the subscriber that you respond with an explanation for each separate issue raised, unless of course you deem yourself as doing the subscriber a favor.

As I sat on my laptop in my house in Kafue, I read the comments of discontent subscribers and I realized that the problem with Airtel is that they do not value the customer. They just want money. However, that has to change. Because we are already paying them money, we just have to sit them down and show them what we want till they oblige.

We need to see an improvement in Airtel’s overall customer care policy, going beyond lip service and actualizing those promises to ensure that customers feel that they are not being cheated out of their hard earned cash by this Indian corporation.

A piece of advice to Airtel is that if you continue to underestimate and disparage the source of your income, we the people have the capacity to incapacitate you and help you pack out of business. It should be understood clearly that Airtel was not here before, and tomorrow we can make sure that it no longer is here. This is a subscriber’s threat.

Airtel is not the “boss”. The subscribers are. If they complain about the quality of service that they are receiving and those issues fall on deaf ears, there are two things that will most likely happen. Firstly, the subscribers will continue to de-campaign Airtel and probably move to competing providers.

Secondly they can sue Airtel for obtaining money by false pretences. Airtel has misrepresented promotions, products, and services hence collecting large sums of money through talk time use and cash purchases. It must be understood further that the idea of suing Airtel would be supported by many thousands of people who have witnessed these misdeeds on the part of Airtel.

Some of the issues that subscribers have raised include the competitions such as the one where subscribers are promised that one of them would win K10m each day if subscribers would enter a competition by sending a text message to a certain short code. Those text messages cost about K3000 each. It is believed that no one has ever won that competition hence Airtel has been pocketing that money from the competition.

Airtel is in the habit of changing the terms of competitions or promotions such as Cheza without explicitly communicating to subscribers who have opted in with the ulterior intention to make more money from the same unsuspecting subscribers. Recently Airtel increased the charge on Cheza from K2 to K5 without informing the subscribers explicitly. Airtel claims that they had places adverts in the newspaper. The question is how many of the 4 million subscribers read the newspaper that carried those announcements?

Airtel further contended that they were giving 100 sms over weekend for the numbers that are enrolled for the Cheza program. However, subscribers wondered what an individual needs 100 sms for over 2 days especially that you can only sms the same number. Hence the justification given by Airtel’s customer care crew that visited my house in Kafue on Tuesday 8 November was flimsy and inordinate.

Internet bundles are also excessively expensive on Airtel. Meanwhile their 3G is slow and below world class standards. This is unacceptable in a country that is desperate to develop and reduce the cost of business in order to promote wealth creation.

I have written on this BlogSpot before how that Airtel’s 100MB is 3 times more expensive than Cell C’s 100MB bundle. My internet connection for instance is unlimited for which I pay $87 on Microlink. This is still very expensive compared to similar services in other countries. However, with my average usage of 8 to 10GB per month, I would be paying in excess of $250 on Airtel accompanied with an unreliable delivery and poor service support.

That brings us to the quality of customer care services that Airtel subjects it customers to. This alone would warrant suspension of the operating license of this service provider in developed nations. Customer care is the epicenter of customer satisfaction but it seems that Airtel use that for customer provocation.

Their customer care crew is clearly untrained and has adopted an attitude that is designed to provoke customers and cause increased dissatisfaction. The complaints related to bad customer care experiences are so many that believably, if sorted, that alone may indicate willingness on the part of Airtel to make its customers happy.

However, it is understandable that they would not have the capacity to do that, as we saw in their response to the last boycott that they just don’t really care about us.

This is why the Wednesday Boycott will continue this week 16th November, as we grow numbers, get more on to the ground get more organized and continue to demand for investors to deliver a morally acceptable service both in terms of quality and in terms of pricing.

The mission of this Wednesday boycott is to press an order for quality services of a world class standard at the price that is right regardless of the sector in order to promote development and raise Zambia’s standard of services in general.

To Airtel the world is watching, the customers are standing up, and the nation is listening.