Mass Action for Cell Phone Users?

J

Jonpad

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Dear All
I'm sure this has been suggested before. Everyone I speak to about cell phone costs express the same sentiment that we are paying far too much for airtime. The cost ,for example, to make a call to landline from cell is horrendous.:sick:

What about a consumer boyott to send a clear and message to service providers.
We choose a day of two ( after a sustained publicity email campaign) and simply switch off cell phones for that duration. (remember life before cell phones whence we made arrangments to meet, etc). Consumer boycotts have worked before and I'm confident that service providers will feel an immediate drop in sales if the consumer action is well supported.
Come on SA lets use that red button and tell the fat cats where to get off.
 
I hate to say this, but Mass Action in this country is futile.

Consumers are apathetic when it comes to actually inconveniencing themselves to achieve a goal such as this.....
 
Maybe so, but consumers shouldn't have to inconvenience themselves, the regulator that they pay for out of their taxes should just do its job.
 
Oh, this i do agree with. !C@S@ should do there damn job properly instead of sucking up to the ppl they should be regulating....
 
Exactly, maybe we should just accept reality and set up a consumer group to offer ICASA better "incentives" than Telkom does. :D
 
The only incentive I want to offer them is 'Not having your homes firebombed'.
 
Talk to cosatu to organise it. If you think forumites and others with email addys are the biggest section of their market, think again.

To be truthful, while I agree with you re: pricing, I won't switch off. I'd lose to much business.
 
Ambitious?- yes

Thanks for replying albeit a little bit depressing.
I'm still positive about this type of action.Yes you may lose a bit of business but think of the costs you are incurring through unreasonable communication costs. Time invested now could save overhead later.

Granted consumer mass action is dormant in SA( Yes we tip bad service-well I used to in the past) ,but here is an opportunity to get the ball rolling.
Maybe downscale the switch off to "sms only".This could be more realistic.
Done at and periodic intervals, say the " the last three days of the month", I'm sure sales figures will be adversely affected after sustained length of time.
This way the idea can catch on and we all have reasonable cell phone bills after say a year.
At the moment I have not met anyone who feels that they are getting value for money.
 
Jonpad said:
Thanks for replying albeit a little bit depressing.
I'm still positive about this type of action.Yes you may lose a bit of business but think of the costs you are incurring through unreasonable communication costs. Time invested now could save overhead later.

Granted consumer mass action is dormant in SA( Yes we tip bad service-well I used to in the past) ,but here is an opportunity to get the ball rolling.
Maybe downscale the switch off to "sms only".This could be more realistic.
Done at and periodic intervals, say the " the last three days of the month", I'm sure sales figures will be adversely affected after sustained length of time.
This way the idea can catch on and we all have reasonable cell phone bills after say a year.
At the moment I have not met anyone who feels that they are getting value for money.
Click to expand...

With 30 days in a month if say 10% of users (which is probably overly generous) switched off for 10% of the month (eg 3 days) they'd lose 1% of their income, which may be a lot, but they'd probably lose more by reducing their tariffs.
 
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Fair enough, but this generous 10% could increase as part of a campaign. A good idea will catch on.
Yes they may lose initially but surely the old adage,"to make money one must spend money" will kick in as lower tariffs will encourage more usage. My phone is for purely private use but I do( painfully) limit the no. of calls during the day as a result of prohibitive high costs. I don't mind spending the same amount of money on my cell bill - I just want value for money.( Have you ever tried calling Joburgdirect to query a faulty electricity bill from your cell). The costs incurred in making the call, make the incorrectly inflated bill look silly. Now thats saying that two things.One I'm really stupid to let an operator keep me on the line for twenty minutes and two, there is something really foul with cell phone tariffs.

I say that you simply email people on your address book with a short blurb(you can copy a line of two form my previous post) to get a feel for the idea.
 
How about, a "phone your service provider and bitch day"?

Imagine if everyone picked up their phone at mid-day and phoned their service provider (toll-free) and told them that they think they are being ripped off... how many calls can they handle before they start getting the message?
 
I dont think jonpad realizes how many customers these providers actually have! do u have ANY idea how many people must switch off their phones for the SP's to actually "feel" it? Its like that day a while ago where everyone should stop driving their cars for a day to give the message abt the petrol price. Did it work? I dont think so.
 
This has been done in the past - the Nigerian story comes to mind (though I think Kenya had a similar protest.)

The Nigerian story is here.

Interesting read of the final outcome (for those interested.)
 
Thanks kilo39. Will give it a read. Sounds interesting.Still hopeful that we South African consumers can transform to customers.
 
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