The telecoms sector took centre stage at the CAFON/LTV Lagos Consumer Forum on Tuesday November 24, 2009 as consumers and service providers deliberated on the issues that plague service delivery in the sector. Speakers at the Forum included Deolu Ogunbanjo, National President, National Association of Telecoms Subscribers, NATCOMS; Mena Ajakpovi, a legal practitioner; Lagos Capone, National Association of Seadogs, Dave Pepple; Boladale Adeyinka, representing director general, Consumer Protection Council, Ify Umenyi.

Consumer Advocacy Forum Faculty was represented by Sina Badaru, publisher of Nigeria ’s ICT newspaper, Technology Times; Femi Segun, renowned broadcaster and Dr Eniola Ajayi, chairman, National Optometric Association, Lagos Chapter

MTN, Zain and Starcomms were represented though all the networks were invited. MTN was represented by Ibrahim Mohammed, customer care manager, West and his team. Zain team was led by Khalil Kalo and Emeka Oparah and their team. Starcomms had its Customer Service Director and Manager in attendance. Curiously, Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, was absent though they were invited.

General consumer issues like drop calls, undelivered SMS, unsolicited SMS, fraudulent text messages (I even received one during the forum informing me that I won one million naira and a free ticket to South Africa for 2010 FIFA World Cup) were brought to the fore. Ogunbanjo listed the top ten consumer complaints as including consumers being charged for services not rendered, poor service delivery and awful customer care structures and processes. He asked why Zain had stopped producing the N50 recharge card which would have increased consumer choices.

Badaru decided to play the devil’s advocate and explained to consumers some of the reasons drop calls are experienced, which could be due to the topography (hills and valleys), vandalisation of base stations, poor capacity of phone handsets and many more. He opined that poor service delivery might not be solely the responsibility of the service providers and wondered if consumers might need to be better informed and show some understanding about the challenges of telecoms service delivery. He also highlighted the contributions of telecoms to the Nigerian economy.

Mena Ajakpovi, the legal practitioner, spoke about consumer rights in issues of inability to recharge or in cases of fake recharge cards. According to him, the law that guides this transaction is the Law of Contracts but he opined that due to the high cost of litigation, individual consumers are discouraged from pursing their rights legally. The option to him is a class action so if many consumers can prove that they purchased recharge cards and were unable to use it for the purpose (e.g. an urgent call), action could be instituted against the offending network (for instance, MTN consumers complained bitterly about the failure of its recharge process in recent times).

Consumers at the forum aired their grievances mostly on the Zain and MTN networks, ranging from caller tunez being charged monthly without MTN informing the subscriber upfront before signing up; being charged for an MMS which was never downloaded also on MTN; inability to reach customer care lines for hours sometimes; fraudulent text messages especially about the FIFA 2010 World Cup promo; high tariffs which sometimes made MTN services more expensive than other networks. The MTN team apologized to the consumers and explained that they were expanding their call center facilities to reduce customer frustrations.

Eniola Ajayi raised issues on high tariffs, poor service delivery on Starcomms internet service, inflexibility with switching from business time to prepaid plans on MTN and poor customer call centre service. Femi Segun complained vehemently about Zain’s seeming inability to control its agents. According to him, he purchased a line (when the company was Econet) from one of its agents and discovered that he was arbitrarily being charged and disconnected even when he was in credit of over N30,000!

The issue kept recurring for months, resulting in irreparable loss of business as it was the only line he had. He was also repeatedly embarrassed because if contractors called him on the number, they were told he no longer qualified to receive calls on that number, creating the impression that he was a debtor! The Zain team promised to intervene and get back to him.