MTN\u2019s broken contract cancellation process is costing many of its subscribers thousands of rands without an easy way to recover the money.<\/p>\n
MyBroadband received numerous complaints about MTN\u2019s contract cancellation process, with subscribers saying there was no easy way to cancel their contracts.<\/p>\n
To establish whether these complaints are justified, a MyBroadband staff member tested the process by cancelling a R299 per month MTN data contract.<\/p>\n
The contract expired in March 2023, and she first contacted MTN to cancel the contract in December 2022 to ensure there were no additional charges.<\/p>\n
However, she was informed that she could not cancel the contract before February 2023 as she would incur significant penalties if she did.<\/p>\n
She contacted MTN again in February 2023, as MTN advised her, but she was again told that she could not cancel the contract as she would have to pay hefty penalties.<\/p>\n
The MTN agent said she should cancel on 3 March 2023 to avoid paying penalties.<\/p>\n
When she called on 3 March, as instructed by MTN, her first call was cut off. The second call went through, but the agent put her on hold for minutes when they heard she wanted to cancel.<\/p>\n
The third call was answered, and she managed to cancel. It was quick and easy, and she received an SMS confirming the cancellation.<\/p>\n
All seemed well until she checked her bank statement and realised that MTN had deducted R1,365 from her account.<\/p>\n
The MTN agent informed her that because she only cancelled in March, which was late, she was charged the high prepaid rate for the next month.<\/p>\n
The MTN agent admitted that she was given the wrong advice by the other MTN agents regarding the cancellation process.<\/p>\n
However, MTN said they could not refund her. Instead, she was advised to email MTN her complaint and request a refund.<\/p>\n
She emailed the suggested department, but they merely reiterated what the call centre said about the late cancellation. She was told there would be no refund.<\/p>\n
The test confirmed what other MTN subscribers complained about and revealed that MTN makes it nearly impossible to cancel without incurring additional charges.<\/p>\n
This behaviour from MTN is not only at odds with the Consumer Protection Act but also does not align with its Treating Customers Fairly policy.<\/p>\n
MyBroadband provided MTN with a detailed timeline of the contract cancellation test and the additional charges it levied despite doing exactly what MTN advised.<\/p>\n
MTN admitted that MyBroadband\u2019s experience is not an isolated incident and the basis of an ongoing project to improve several of its customer experiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has become clear to us that there is a problem with our cancellation process, and work is already underway to fix this and ensure a more seamless experience for our customers,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
Currently, MTN\u2019s systems do not allow for future dated cancellations. What this means is that it is unable to capture a cancellation request before 30 days before cancellation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have identified this as a point of frustration for customers, and to this end, we are working on revising the process to allow for future dated cancellations,\u201d MTN said.<\/p>\n
MTN said its agents were correct in advising her that December would be too early to cancel the staff members\u2019 contract as it would incur early termination fees.<\/p>\n
Upon further investigation, and due to the restrictions of the current inability to future date cancellations, MTN said an anomaly had occurred over the February and March period.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe recognise that this is frustrating for customers and points to both a training gap and process issue that needs to be resolved,\u201d MTN said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur agents and systems need to be better equipped to deal with this type of anomaly.\u201d<\/p>\n
MTN said it is working on updating its systems to allow future dated cancellations into its process. In addition, MTN is introducing speech analytics into the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis technology would be aimed at matching the customer request for cancellation with the processing and finalisation of the cancellation,\u201d MTN said.<\/p>\n
MTN explained that the significantly higher out-of-contract fee \u2014 in this case, R1,365 instead of R299 \u2014 is a result of discounts on packages. When the contract matures, the monthly fee reverts to the \u201cbase plan\u201d price.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of these are legacy plans and have been rectified in the structuring of new packages going forward,\u201d MTN said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis means customers will not see such a significant increase in fees once they are out of contract.\u201d<\/p>\n
MTN apologised to customers who have experienced issues with their cancellation and asked that they contact 083 135 to try to resolve the problems.<\/p>\n
MTN says there is a problem with its cancellation process, and work is already underway to fix it and ensure a more seamless experience for its customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":472011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[35,42],"class_list":["post-490577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-headline","tag-mtn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490577"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":490609,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490577\/revisions\/490609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}