Vodacom may be forced by the National Consumer Commission to refund its customers for losses suffered because of the operator’s network failure on Thursday
VODACOM may be forced by the National Consumer Commission to refund its customers for losses suffered because of the operator’s network failure on Thursday, which left many clients unable to make and receive calls for most of the day.
If the commission, which administers the Consumer Protection Act (CPA), succeeds in sanctioning Vodacom, it will be the first case under the act. It could set a precedent compelling other companies to improve service to customers.
Section 54 of the act, which gives consumers the right to demand good-quality services, states that if a supplier fails to perform a service, the consumer may require the supplier to remedy any defect in the quality of the service performed or goods supplied, or to refund a reasonable portion of the price paid for the services performed and goods supplied.
Vodacom issued a full-page apology in yesterday’s newspapers, in which its CEO Pieter Uys said the cause of the outage was a multiple failure in the transmission network. "We are conducting a thorough investigation to understand exactly what caused this failure and why the backup systems did not do their job," he said.
But the national consumer commissioner, Mamodupi Mohlala, said yesterday an apology was "not good enough. Consumers are entitled to a refund as stated in the CPA. The network operators (including Vodacom) are aware of this clause, section 54(2) in the CPA."
On Friday the commission received inquiries from disgruntled Vodacom customers asking if they were entitled to any form of remedy. Four filed formal complaints, claiming to have lost new business opportunities and to have suffered loss of income because they could not make or receive calls.
Ms Mohlala said customers must quantify their claims for compensation and the commission would immediately look into those complaints. She said it was irrelevant whether those customers entered into a contract before or after April 1, the implementation date of the act. They were entitled to a refund because they were meeting their monthly payment obligation and the network failure occurred after the date of the act coming into force, she said. Ironically, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) said on Friday it had conducted a quality of service survey on MTN, Vodacom and Cell C from November 10-15 in parts of Gauteng.
It found that all three operators failed to meet the target in reducing the dropped-call rate.
Icasa said it would instruct all network operators to provide an explanation of network problems experienced on Thursday.
The mobile network operators have previously been criticised for poor network service. All three are spending billions to upgrade their network.
Vodacom’s latest network failure and the potential sanctioning by the commission come at time when Icasa is in the process of applying for the industry to be exempted from section 54 of the act, on the grounds that Icasa already oversees quality of service under the Electronic Communications Act.
Vodacom was not available for comment yesterday.
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