3 years ago
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MTN’s broken contract cancellation process is costing many of its subscribers thousands of rands without an easy way to recover the money.
MyBroadband received numerous complaints about MTN’s contract cancellation process, with subscribers saying there was no easy way to cancel their contracts.
To establish whether these complaints are justified, a MyBroadband staff member tested the process by cancelling a R299 per month MTN data contract.
The contract expired in March 2023, and she first contacted MTN to cancel the contract in December 2022 to ensure there were no additional charges.
However, she was informed that she could not cancel the contract before February 2023 as she would incur significant penalties if she did.
She contacted MTN again in February 2023, as MTN advised her, but she was again told that she could not cancel the contract as she would have to pay hefty penalties.
The MTN agent said she should cancel on 3 March 2023 to avoid paying penalties.
When she called on 3 March, as instructed by MTN, her first call was cut off. The second call went through, but the agent put her on hold for minutes when they heard she wanted to cancel.
The third call was answered, and she managed to cancel. It was quick and easy, and she received an SMS confirming the cancellation.
All seemed well until she checked her bank statement and realised that MTN had deducted R1,365 from her account.
The MTN agent informed her that because she only cancelled in March, which was late, she was charged the high prepaid rate for the next month.
The MTN agent admitted that she was given the wrong advice by the other MTN agents regarding the cancellation process.
However, MTN said they could not refund her. Instead, she was advised to email MTN her complaint and request a refund.
She emailed the suggested department, but they merely reiterated what the call centre said about the late cancellation. She was told there would be no refund.
The test confirmed what other MTN subscribers complained about and revealed that MTN makes it nearly impossible to cancel without incurring additional charges.
This behaviour from MTN is not only at odds with the Consumer Protection Act but also does not align with its Treating Customers Fairly policy.
MTN responds
MyBroadband provided MTN with a detailed timeline of the contract cancellation test and the additional charges it levied despite doing exactly what MTN advised.
MTN admitted that MyBroadband’s experience is not an isolated incident and the basis of an ongoing project to improve several of its customer experiences.
“It has become clear to us that there is a problem with our cancellation process, and work is already underway to fix this and ensure a more seamless experience for our customers,” it said.
Currently, MTN’s systems do not allow for future dated cancellations. What this means is that it is unable to capture a cancellation request before 30 days before cancellation.
“We have identified this as a point of frustration for customers, and to this end, we are working on revising the process to allow for future dated cancellations,” MTN said.
MTN said its agents were correct in advising her that December would be too early to cancel the staff members’ contract as it would incur early termination fees.
Upon further investigation, and due to the restrictions of the current inability to future date cancellations, MTN said an anomaly had occurred over the February and March period.
“We recognise that this is frustrating for customers and points to both a training gap and process issue that needs to be resolved,” MTN said.
“Our agents and systems need to be better equipped to deal with this type of anomaly.”
MTN said it is working on updating its systems to allow future dated cancellations into its process. In addition, MTN is introducing speech analytics into the process.
“This technology would be aimed at matching the customer request for cancellation with the processing and finalisation of the cancellation,” MTN said.
MTN explained that the significantly higher out-of-contract fee — in this case, R1,365 instead of R299 — is a result of discounts on packages. When the contract matures, the monthly fee reverts to the “base plan” price.
“Many of these are legacy plans and have been rectified in the structuring of new packages going forward,” MTN said.
“This means customers will not see such a significant increase in fees once they are out of contract.”
MTN apologised to customers who have experienced issues with their cancellation and asked that they contact 083 135 to try to resolve the problems.
English (US)