- Telecom Subscribers Lament Airtime Depletion, Poor Services
Subscribers on Airtel, Glo and 9mobile networks have taken to social media to express their displeasure over poor quality of service they have been experiencing in the past one month.
The disgruntled subscribers lodged complaints such as data and airtime depletion, unauthorised auto renewal, call drop, unresponsive customer care, illegal deductions and poor quality of service.
Major complaints from Airtel subscribers are the automatic subscription to value-added services without their approval and continuous deduction of airtime for auto-renewal despite opting out.
An Airtel subscriber, Daniel Oriazowan, complained of airtime depletion without making calls or receiving notifications from the service provider as to what the deductions were meant for.
Another Airtel subscriber, Adewumi Adeyeye, said, “My number is charged often for services I never activated and all the customers’ service people who spoke to me could tell me was that they were sorry but my money cannot be refunded. Did I send a request for 10VID? The answer is no, so, why am I being charged for it?”
Another subscriber, Ayo Martins, threatened to sue the network provider for subscribing his line to value-added services without his consent, adding that reaching the customer care representatives to lodge the complaint had been difficult.
For subscribers on the Glo network, the major complaints were poor quality of service and airtime deductions for value added services not subscribed to.
A Glo customer, Oladipupo Akinola, said though the network offered cheap data to customers, the quality of service had not made it possible for him to enjoy it.
“This is a subtle corruption when you have to subscribe to data, your money is taken but you can’t even use the data at all. This is so pathetic.” he said.
Joseph King and Eugeñe Nsoro, both subscribers on the Glo network, lamented subscription to value-added services without their consent.
Most of the subscribers on 9mobile network complained of poor quality of service especially after the system upgrade that took place on February 3 and February 4, 2018.
One of the subscribers, Andrew Esther, complained that the networks’ USSD codes had not been working while Razman Badaman complained of inability to browse after the upgrade.
Another subscriber, Ezekiel Simon, expressed his disappointment at being charged for value-added service despite subscribing to ‘Do Not Disturb’.
He said, “I sent STOP to 2442 but I still receive unwanted calls and SMS.”
The Nigerian Communications Commission had introduced means by which subscribers could bar all promotional messages on their phones by sending ‘Stop’ to 2442 and it reported activation by 10 million subscribers to the service.
The Executive Vice Chairman of the commission, Prof. Umar Danbatta, also called on Nigerians to make use of the NCC’s toll-free line (622) to lodge complaints with regard to the Quality of Service and other related services.
