My big phone company and I
My phone company is very big. It is so big that it considers me (and I’m sure, millions of other people) a little pawn on its chessboard. Not that I mind how it chooses to see me – I don’t particularly have the height of a basketball player or the build of King Kong, do I? So if it chooses to see me as a pawn, somebody dispensable, then I might not really be able to contest that. But it might just be that it will do if my phone company also takes on board the fact that in any chess game, a piece of pawn is useful and helps make the play meaningful for everybody involved. If those guys at my phone company are in doubt they should go and ask famous Russian chess titans, Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov. It boils down to saying, simply, that my phone company would be useless without several pawns like me who help it achieve a healthy bottom line for its shareholders and, as a result, meet the revenue targets set for it in South Africa!
It seems, though, that pawn or no pawn, my phone company will use its size and its technology to follow my movement wherever I go. But that’s really aided by my own actions – that is, if I choose to load its SIM card on my mobile phone wherever I am. It’s the reason why, the other time, upon alighting from the plane in Accra, Ghana, it sent me a text message saying AKWAABA (Welcome!) when I turned on my phone with its SIM still in it. Surprisingly, it was soliciting me, a pawn, to patronise it in that country.
Fellow indulgees, on this holiday, which I am now beginning to wind up with some amount of hesitation, it is here with me in the UK, seizing on every opportunity whenever I have inserted its SIM card into my phone to check if anybody had sent me a message that needed an urgent reply, to welcome me to the Queen’s country. But I know better, don’t I? Every time I have seen its welcome message, I have laughed so hard because I know that if I were to fall into its spell to do what it really wants me to do, I will not only get poor service but also be set back in pocket by a hefty amount of money. So, as soon as I finished reading messages from friends and foes alike, I often immediately switched the SIM to my UK phone company, VODAFONE, or the one I call “making-life-easier-for-customer” network, LEBARA (by the way, over the weekend, this network especially recognised Nigeria in its adverts and text messages, by reducing its call rate to the country during the Sallah break to two pence a minute).
Ignoring my phone company is not because I’m incapable of loving it. As a matter of fact, I earnestly want to fall in love with my Nigerian phone company, but I am completely at a loss how to do so. Any of you indulgees out there who has any potion that can make me weak in the knees for my phone company and get me hopelessly in love with it should not hesitate to send it to me. As a matter of fact, I will order two doses of the potion so that, like Romeo, when the potion takes effect, I will go and meet my bank managers to arrange a direct debit payment every month, on a five-year golden handcuff contract! The problem I foresee, though, is that in the end, the potion is not likely to work on me because my phone company does not have the right chemistry to treat pawns well in its business relationship.
“Phillip! Phillip! Phillip!” Okay, I take that to be the proverbial “how many times did I call your name” question. I will answer you and say three times. I will go on to ask you, what’s the point? Is it borne out of your perplexity at what seems to be my total lack of faith in my phone company? Or is it the case that you are not sure if this is just the usual opportunity to have a chin wag before you get into the real business of Business Life? Not quite! Everything has some history either going for or going against it. In this case, my phone company has some history going against it, which I will explain presently.
Remember that it was in this same Starters a few years ago that I first let rip my disappointment that my phone company was trying to rip me off by collecting N5,000 for an email service on my Blackberry phone without delivering the said service. I also let you indulgees into how far and wide I had gone to have the issue resolved and how it never got resolved. Upon writing that piece (I also got similar complaints from some of you indulgees who thanked me for bringing this matter to public attention), I got an email from the customer service people of the company, who had been emailed my Starters column and advised to look into the matter, to request for my mobile phone number so they could do something about it. I was pleased that at least the attention of those who hold the queens, kings, bishops and knights at my phone company had been captured. It was only normal to therefore wait to see what would happen. Nothing happened!
With nothing happening, and having collected my N5,000, I always knew that as long as I lived, the money not returned to me and the service not rendered, I would always be a creditor to my phone company! And if I ever have the opportunity to be the chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), with power to publish the names of debtor-companies that owe network customers N5,000 and above and then alerting the EFCC to go into overdrive, I will put my phone company at the top of the list. It wouldn’t matter then whether or not they still thought I was a pawn to be toyed with. If they are quick enough they might look for the nearest porous border through which they can escape, but be sure that I might just also have the power to appoint a new executive team to secure the trillions of naira so far made from customers so as to be able to pay creditors like me (whom they owe N5,000 right now). If you think N5,000 is not enough reason to embark on this kind of action, you may wish to take that question to millions of Nigerians who don’t have the proverbial United Nations acclaimed poverty-wreaking $2 a day to live on! You will find some among them who will ask for heads to literally roll!
But, fellow indulgees, it was only when my phone company, using its technology very effectively to chase me to the UK with a text message advising me that my N5,000 had expired, that I realised that this company must have grown so big that it really doesn’t know who are its creditors (me) and who are its debtors! Which is why I will continue to ask the question: Who shall act as an arbitrator between the Queen-like phone company (big business generally) and Pawn-like customers, like me, who are being cheated out of our life savings (which we voluntarily used to buy a service and are not getting from big business)?
I do not mean to sing that famous song by the UK R&B singer, Lemar (who, by the way, is also Nigerian), “If there is any justice in the world”, but there is enough reason, given the experience I have had with my phone company, to sing that song very, very loud. For if, indeed, there was any justice, I wouldn’t need any potion to hopelessly fall in love with my phone company. Right now, I have no reason to do so. And no double-potion will have power over me as far as this matter is concerned.
If my phone company had done this to me here in the UK, where I am enjoying the sumtumnal weather mostly in my garden (that’s my own creation for a mixed summer and autumn weather), then I could easily have taken my case to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), who would have looked into my complaints where, upon finding out that I had been dealt an unjust hand by my phone company (as has happened in this case), they would have imposed a hefty fine on it and asked it to deliver the service and award some good cash for causing me trauma, distress and loss of earnings! It is for this glaring disregard for customers that I move (and ask all indulgees to email and text in their support for this motion) for the establishment of a UK-style impartial Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in Nigeria!
By: PHILLIP ISAKPA