With the arrival of mobile phone companies in the country, it was thought that Ghanaians were going to be relieved of the poor services that were being rendered at the time by the then Ghana Telecom with their fixed land line operations.
But now what do we see after their arrival? The companies, armed with selling points that vend phone units in virtually every corner of the country and situated at vantage points across the country, are only engaged in coming tops in the competition among themselves.
This has culminated in some kind of advertising war. Billboards of various sizes have sprung up all over the place. The competition is very keen on television and radio for instance. Under the circumstances it is as if the customer is of no consequence.
In as much as they want to entice and attract more people to hook onto their networks, they must equally show some interest in the well-being of their customers.
All the networks have problems and yet surprisingly, they are all concentrating on churning out adverts and engaging in sponsorship programmes.
One wonders why they cannot use some of the money they are reaping from us to improve on their services so that we could all enjoy and have quality service.
At the UDS main campus at Bamahu for instance, service is so poor that sometimes I feel like locking up my cell phone and not using it again. Communication is vital and if these keep on occurring then it is better we live without the companies so that at least we could find other means to communicate with each other. The telecommunications companies are not really up to the task.
Some are only concentrated in the regional capitals to the neglect of other parts of the country.
I suggest that the companies embark on a special programme to know at first hand the problems that their customers face, particularly those of us on school campuses.
Many people use multiple phones not to show off but do so in an attempt to ward off problems associated with connectivity on some networks.
Telecommunication service providers are really not living up to expectation. Infact, they have taken us for granted for far too long. All they do is to spend huge sums of money advertising promotions without thinking about rectifying the problems associated with their services.
Many times that I make calls I am told the recipient’s phone is switched off when in fact it is not so. There was a time I sent a text message as early as five o’clock in the morning and it was received the next day. Such hitches are common with all the networks.
Seriously, problems with the networks have caused many people a lot of suffering, including break up of relationships.
Ghanaians have to rise up and begin to take action against these companies. This I believe will make them sit up and give us quality service for our money.
Mobile phones have come to stay and so it is important to push the telecommunication companies to make them live up to expectation.
With regard to the use of the units, it is important that we are not given actual figures. Currently so much is deducted after very few minutes of talk. Sometimes units are deducted when calls have even not been made.
One wonders whether the companies are serving our interest or their own selfish interest. It is as if their only interest is in taking our money and give us poor services.
It is we the customers who patronise their services to enable them to engage and spend massively on sponsorship programmes and on billboards and other forms of adverts.
If we do not patronise their products and services they do not get money, so it is important that they see us as crucial to their existence.
Ever since I began using the mobile phone, I have tried all the networks and the problems are the same all over. Either there are network connectivity problems or the caller is told the recipient’s phone is switched off.
The phone companies also have to improve on their tariff rates and problems associated with network communications. At times too, one hears some funny noise while making calls as well as breaks in communications which sometimes leaves callers out of reach with each other.
All these must be checked so that customers are not exploited. They need also to improve on their customer care services as well.
I once called the customer service centre of one of the networks and was told to hold on. I held on for a very long time without any response.
Truth must be told about how long their phone card units can last so that we would know how long we can talk with the kind of units that we buy.
As a people we need to stand up with one voice and fight any kind of deceit. Ghanaians are always looking up to God to solve their problems for them. It is about time that we also did things to help ourselves. It is the always leave-it-to-God syndrome that has landed us where we are today.
Indeed, poor services rendered by the mobile phone service providers leave some nostalgic about the good old land lines of yester years. Though that era also had its problems those were well understood and it was not like today when though the customer is promised heaven through the many adverts on radio and television, we are treated poorly.
The telecommunication companies ought to know that their customers are a significant part of their success stories and need to be treated with dignity.
They must understand that their presence does affect communication in a significant way. Before their arrival we were communicating, and that their presence is only for the sake of convenience.
The least said about the telecommunications companies the better. I am not receiving satisfactory service from the telecommunication network that I use.
Personally, I communicate a lot with people connected to the various networks, MTN, Tigo, Vodafone and Zain, and the feedback has always been the same. Either there is an error in connection or the recipient’s phone is switched off, yet most invariably this is not the case.
I keep wondering if these companies do not receive complaints from their customers or may be they do receive the complaints but turn a blind eye to them
Sometimes when I make calls I receive the message “Error in connection” and this can sometimes continue on end, until the client you are dealing with would withdraw from the deal or business. At other times too, the phone freezes and could remain like that till the next day.
The mobile phone companies really have to sit up and work hard. A time will come when Ghanaians would take legal action against companies that provide poor services.
Many of the inconveniences customers suffer bring with them a lot of cost and I think that it was about time the companies compensated customers for their troubles.
They could do this by either extending the life line of our chips or give us free units in place of units lost through no fault of the customer. They have to give us quality service to justify the money they take from us. Now mobile phones are no longer the ostentatious items they were sometime ago. Today, they are a necessity which every individual must own in this communication age.
Competition is good but it should not be conducted at the expense of customers. I think that the telecommunication companies, though scattered all over the country, are taking us for a ride. Customers are not getting the kind of quality service they have been expecting all these years.
My major concern is that though I buy credit I am almost invariably not able to even feed it onto my mobile phone. Some times when scratching the start-up card, all the numbers get wiped off. All these need to be checked by the companies if they really want some of us to stick to their networks.
We are tired of messages that inform us always that “The mobile number you are calling is switched off or out of coverage area”, when the person is just by you and his or her mobile phone is on.
I think that they will have to do whatever they need to do to improve their services, which I think they have to do quickly since the use of mobile phones is now the order of the day.
Even children these days are using mobile phones and so the earlier these telecom institutions improve on their services and gave us quality services the better. The companies are making huge profits. If you consider the number of units people buy on a daily basis, you could guess what I’m talking about.
I do agree that as human institutions that use machinery for their operations there are bound to be problems but when the problems become the order of the day then it gives indication that things are getting out of hand.
The idea would be to switch on to another network once the customer faces problems. But when you get used to a particular network switching to another becomes a problem.
I am a customer of both MTN and Vodafone, and so far I am happy with the services I receive though once in a while poor reception becomes a problem. I do not know if it happens as a result of the weather conditions we have.
With the rains about to set in, the mobile phone networks go into all manner of difficulties and this is where I want the companies to monitor developments carefully and tackle them so that they do not become perennial. For those of us using modems supplied by some of these companies to connect to the Internet, it is indeed a major concern because during the rainy season when the weather is so bad it becomes difficult to even send pictures by the Internet, as the system freezes. Meanwhile, during the interruption units keep running.
This is something that the companies need to critically work on. When not rendering any service to me why should units be deducted? This is cheating and the telecom companies would have to watch these things.
All in all, I think we need them and they also need us. Therefore, it is about time they sat up and gave us our money’s worth.
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