My name is Isaac Sintufya and holder of Mobile Phone Number +260977636237.
I have been a royal client of Airtel from its inception in Zambia.
It was on Thursday around 23:00hrs when I was buying their daily unlimited (yet caped) bundle of K15 to enable me do some ZRA online VAT submissions. I followed their usual details of dialing *575# to activate the bundle as I have always done. Their system kept on failing to activate. Due to the ZRA pressure on online submissions, I kept on trying a couple of times without success until I slept.
At 03:21, 20 Dec, a message came that I had been subscribed successfully to the unlimited daily plan. They deducted K15.00 from my airtime as usual.
But before I could even enjoy, two minutes after being subscribed, another message at 03:23, 20 Dec, came saying you have been subscribed successfully to the unlimited daily plan and another deduction of K15.00 hit my account.
After one minute another message at 03:24, 20 Dec, came saying you have been subscribed successfully to the unlimited daily plan and another deduction of K15.00 was sucked from my account. A minute later, another deduction was done on my account bringing the total of four deductions in less than 10minutes. I was thinking that maybe the definitions of words had evolved without my knowledge because I kept wondering how 4 solid days were squeezed to fit inside the ten minutes of my time. Or could it be that my family and I were put on auto-hibernation which lasted for 96hours?
I tried to call them on 575, the internet related customer care line, at 04:18 and they promised to rectify the error before 09:30hrs as the technical guys would only be in the office by 08:00hrs. I called them again at 09:34hrs and they told me my case is being worked on and that I would get my refund after 2hrs. I waited until 17hours when I called them and they kept assuring me that they would refund but to no avail.
Today, the 21st of December 2013, when I called them they then changed their mind that they DO NOT refund of give EXTEND bundles resulting in their system errors.
My questions to them are as follows;
- Should clients be punished for their system’s incompetence?
- Should someone be charged for the advertised service which has not been delivered to them?
- Is it a crime to RETRY a failed transaction on Airtel?
- Suppose my phone only had K15.00 exactly in it, were they going to treat my airtime top-ups of the day as credits for RETRYING a failed transaction on their system?
- Is their IT Department a joke?
If their answer to the above questions is YES, then Airtel should rebrand themselves as follows;
- AIRFAIL and not Airtel – They keep failing us in the Air and on the ground too.
- Their motto should be information leakers. They did it during the MMD lost elections by leaking our numbers for the then Ruling Party to use our phones as campaign platforms.
- Shameless Con-Artists – They will not sleep until your last coin in your phone shifts camp to their side.
What is ZICTA doing about such infesters?
I rest my case.
Concerned Citizen
Isaac Sintufya