Frustrating experiencing joining Afrihost Voice from MTN contract

[thewusman]

Contract expired 19 December.

Applied online to join Afrihost Voice package on 20 December.

(Was already a mobile data customer with sim previously being provisioned).

Received Afrihost emails Monday morning saying welcome to Afrihost Mobile etc. etc. dial *141*774*1# to give consent, but it just gives an error "this service is for Afrihost customers only". Um. Ok.

Call centre say it needs to be reprovisioned by MTN and have resubmitted sim details.

Was told the same story on 21 and 22 December "we've spoken to the dev team it will take 2-3 hours, you will receive an sms".

Open and escalated support tickets are somewhere in the ether gathering dust.

Still nothing.

Sigh.

 

[thewusman]

Day 4 and still no luck.

Didn't realise porting over to Afrihost mobile would be such a nightmare.

Would've stayed with MTN if I'd known. Very poor.

Seems nobody at AH knows why the sim and contract can't be provisioned onto their network. Left hand. Right hand. They not speaking to each other that's for sure.

AfriReps enjoy the break but know that when you guys disappear it seems the rest of the operation goes pear shaped !

 

[thewusman]

After 4 days running around in circles, this has now been resolved.

Thanks to the AH Critical care team for the regular feedback (although it took 2 days to be escalated to them).

TL;DR

If you are a MTN contract customer and your contract ends, you can port to any network as a *contract* customer immediately.

Even though MTN own Afrihost, you are still expected to convert your expired contract sim to a prepaid MTN sim, and then provision onto AH.

While this may seem easy, MTN then came back with a "you must wait another 30 days for your out of contract sim to be converted to a prepaid sim".

For what is - still - a *port* I told them that is extortion and explained the whole Nigeria thing doesn't make them look good, neither will this. Sanity prevailed and 2 hours later this morning I had my sim converted to prepaid and am happily using Afrihost mobile.

Hope that helps anyone else in a similar situation.

 

[CYB3R N1NJ4]

Thank you.
I was slightly disappointed when I learned that I was unable to add the voice package to an existing data package.
Assumed it would be easy as both are on the MTN SIM cards and they are already RICA to me.

Would have been easier than running 2 SIM's in a dual SIM phone or using a mifi.

 

[AfriMan]

Contract expired 19 December.

Applied online to join Afrihost Voice package on 20 December.

(Was already a mobile data customer with sim previously being provisioned).

Received Afrihost emails Monday morning saying welcome to Afrihost Mobile etc. etc. dial *141*774*1# to give consent, but it just gives an error "this service is for Afrihost customers only". Um. Ok.

Call centre say it needs to be reprovisioned by MTN and have resubmitted sim details.

Was told the same story on 21 and 22 December "we've spoken to the dev team it will take 2-3 hours, you will receive an sms".

Open and escalated support tickets are somewhere in the ether gathering dust.

Still nothing.

Sigh.

This definitely seems overly complicated, it was a very smooth experience when I signed up.

Can you drop me a PM and I'll ask our Voice project manager to look into this to find out what happened. I'm sure we can resolve this

EDIT: I see you later message that you managed to resolve this. Just to assure you that the vast majority of clients are not having these hassles. Contract numbers roll over as month to month contract when contracts expire and are not considered prepaid. We have a few clients with a similar issue and we should have advised you to downgrade to prepaid from the get go if that was clearly communicated to us. Apologies for the misunderstanding and run around

 

[AfriMan]

Thank you.
I was slightly disappointed when I learned that I was unable to add the voice package to an existing data package.
Assumed it would be easy as both are on the MTN SIM cards and they are already RICA to me.

Would have been easier than running 2 SIM's in a dual SIM phone or using a mifi.

If you're talking about existing data sims, they unfortunately cannot be provisioned for voice services, however we can issue you with new SIMS and numbers for voice. You will need to RICA the new SIMS under the RICA legislation provisions. If they are regular prepaid MTN sims, you should be able to sign them up and your existing APN products will be merged into the current package (but you may need to regrade the package because the airtime/data plans are fixed for each voice product). I was in that situation and it was pretty easy for me

 

[CYB3R N1NJ4]

Thanks @AfriMan, unfortunately I went and got another SIM yesterday to use for the mobile package. It may just be easier to cancel my data package and have it reinstated as a new connection on my voice SIM.
The problem now is that the SIM number was placed in the clientzone 18 hours ago and is still not active. MTN suggest adding airtime on the SIM to make it active but concerned that it is going to clash with the purpose the SIM was purchased for, to use Afrihost mobile.