Dear Dr Juwah,
When I wrote the first part of this open
letter last week, I was under no illusions that I would get an immediate
response from National Communications Commission or Direct-On-PC. And so that
none has come is no surprise at all. Truth is the surprise would have been if it
had been otherwise. From the onset therefore, I know that this is more likely
to be a marathon, rather than a dash.
However, I am not about to come to any
conclusions yet about the whys and whys-not of the non-reaction from your end,
dear Vice Chairman. I am in fact willing to concede that neither you nor your
media minders, two of whom I recognize are thorough professionals while on this
side of the communication divide, might not have seen this letter, for whatever
reasons. It is for that reason that I am putting up this as something of a
reminder, in case this medium gets luckier this time.
As I stated last week, a company known as
Direct-On-PC, offering data services under the supervision of your commission,
has been taking its clients for granted in the quality of service it renders
and its attitude to righting the wrongs it frequently does. I explained then that I was resorting to this
medium because all my attempts to use the complaint facility on your website
have failed. It seems to have been designed for issues concerning GSM operators
only!
My complaint is that DoPC has a cavalier, in
your face, arrogant, take-it-or-leave-it attitude to what they call
“compensation” for loss of service during periods when through no fault of the
client, days and data allowance are unutilized.
Firstly, they are never proactive about it.
They terminate services on schedule even where there is an on-going case of
loss of service, blaming it on pre-programming.
Next they take their time in processing the so-called “compensation”. It
is not unusual for the ladies at customer care to tell you, “your compensation
is being processed” or “awaiting signature.” And this can go on for a week or
more.
Finally, when the almighty bosses have signed
the “compensation”, it bears absolutely no relationship with either the number
of lost days or the data balance on your account. The particular case in point for which I am
insisting on full compensation will throw some light on this unjust practice by
DoPC.
On August 9, I wrote to the company as follows:
“Dear DoPC, My SOHO account has been at best erratic since it was renewed. In
the last one week, it's been absolutely useless! Connection failure is all I've
got! Can this be resolved, please?
Thanks”
That
began a long agonizing interaction by
email and phone which ended my services or more correctly non-service was
terminated with efficient alacrity on August
25 2012 at the expiry of the 30-day subscription with 8.01GB or about 55% of my data allowance still
unutilized through DoPC’s inefficiency.
As
I stated before I wrote several other emails to Dear DoPC, many of which were
reproduced verbatim in the first part of this letter. For ease of reference,
I’ll repeat two of them:
First,
this one that has proven almost prophetic: “There has been virtually no service
on this account still. Since I reluctantly renewed nearly three weeks ago, I
have been subjected to untold frustration and agony. In what has proved to be
an accident, it worked late last night for about an hour, but has since been
returning "connection failure". Any moment soon, the subscribed
period will be over with well over 70% of data unused. Then another round of
negotiation for "compensation" will start! I feel conned, to put it mildly. Why, DoPC,
why?”
Towards
the end of the 30-day subscription when virtually nothing has changed, I wrote
to them making a specific demand: “May I inform you that in the face of the
VERY POOR service I experienced this past 20 days or so, I am yet to utilise
more that (sic) half of my data allowance. Therefore my service expiry date
needs to be extended by at least three weeks. This is only reasonable and just
because of the inability to use that which was paid for was caused by you.
Please treat as IMMEDIATE. Meanwhile, one can only hope that the slight
improvement in service experienced over the public holiday period will continue
now that work is resuming. Thanks.”
The rest of this
sordid tale of corporate rape is contained in the first part of this letter
which was published last week. I urge you to read it, if you can. My request as I stated it then is that “you to
use your good offices as EVC at NCC to step in, to ensure that the right and
just thing is done in my case and hopefully in all such similar cases,
henceforth...”
Again as I stated
then, should you be unable to help, should I be left at the mercy of a company
that fails, refuses or neglects to provide full service for money collected,
then, I reserve the right to take any further legitimate steps to protect my
right as a consumer.
Incidentally, since the first part of this
letter was published, a number of DoPC customers have written to share their
experiences with me. I have started compiling them for use as we might deem
necessary - a class action, not exempted.
Thanks a million, for your time.
Your Compatriot -
REMI
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