Cell C shame banner 'tame compared to original'

13 November 2014 - 02:20 By Andile Ndlovu
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WALL-TO-WALL WAR OF WORDS: Someone has added 'We love Cell C' and changed 'useless' to 'useful' to the banner put up by a disgruntled customer along Beyers Naude Drive in Johannesburg. The telecoms company is currently seeking a court order to have it removed
WALL-TO-WALL WAR OF WORDS: Someone has added 'We love Cell C' and changed 'useless' to 'useful' to the banner put up by a disgruntled customer along Beyers Naude Drive in Johannesburg. The telecoms company is currently seeking a court order to have it removed
Image: ALON SKUY

George Prokas warned cellphone network provider Cell C several times in e-mails that he would erect his now infamous banner, it emerged in court yesterday.

The banner, which says "The most useless service provider in SA as experienced via Cell C Sandton City", was put up on a surrounding wall of the World-Wear Mall in Johannesburg last week and prompted a social media storm.

The banner also carried the name and contact number of Riaan van Rooyen, the franchise manager at Cell C's Sandton City branch.

The company launched an urgent court application against Prokas. The matter was heard at the Johannesburg High Court yesterday and Judge Sharise Weiner is to decide today on whether to grant an interim order against Prokas.

The telecoms network's lawyers argued that the banner is "defamatory, and unapologetically so", and intended to "lower the reputation of Cell C".

The lawyers also told the court that many disparaging messages had been left on Van Rooyen's cellphone since the banner had been put up in Beyers Naude Drive.

Some messages were read out in court, including one that said: "I was thinking of porting to Cell C, but you can kiss my ass".

Raymond Druker, attorney for Prokas, said that his client had attached a picture of an original banner he intended to erect in an e-mail to Cell C, and that the initial billboard was "a lot worse than the one that went up".

Prokas alleges he bought two phones from Cell C and when one stopped working he took it back, only for him to wait several months before it was returned unrepaired.

He went back to Cell C, which is when he was told he had incurred a bill amounting to R5100, had been blacklisted on ITC, and his account sent to debt collectors.

Weiner wondered "if they should have written off" the amount.

Druker argued it was "astonishing and smacked of revenge" that Prokas had been handed over to debt collectors for the amount.

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