WENDY KNOWLER | An early cellphone ‘upgrade’ doesn’t let you off the hook

“Hello, I’m calling you from Rewards on behalf of MTN Upgrades, because your number is now due for an upgrade. You qualify to upgrade with [one of] the latest devices.”

That was how an agent from RewardsCo got long-standing MTN customer Michael’s attention when she made a telesales call to his cellphone last month.

The fact that she said she was from “Rewards” and not RewardsCo was no doubt meant to create the impression the call was being made from an internal division of MTN, when in fact RewardsCo is one of MTN’s third-party marketing agencies.

As that agent waded deeper into her scripted sales pitch, Michael stopped her, saying he wanted to deal directly with MTN, in a store, not with any third parties.

She didn’t skip a beat, assuring him she was from MTN’s upgrades department, so he was dealing “direct” with MTN, whereas the stores were franchises.

Misleading?

The smooth-talking agent did mention Michael had taken out his current contract in November 2020 but neglected to point out what she was therefore actually selling Michael was an early upgrade, and that he’d therefore still be responsible for paying the balance of his current contract along with his new contract’s subscriptions.

Michael, 56, was not desperate for a new phone; he made that abundantly clear to her. And had he been expressly told his contracts would overlap if he agreed to that early “upgrade”, he would most certainly not have gone for the deal.

She also assured Michael his new Samsung smartphone would come with a screen protector, which it didn’t. That was later rectified, but Michael remained miffed about what he believed to be mis-selling.

“I recently discovered that I am being billed for this upgrade in that I am paying for the balance of the months for the old phone,” he told me in an email.

“I did question the lady about whether there would be any extra cost, and she assured me there would be no extra cost.

“In fact, all she told me was that my new contract’s monthly subscription would be R20 less than my current one.”

So I sent MTN a media query. Why aren’t the sales agents compelled to point out that the upgrade being offered is an early one and that as a result, for a specified number of months, the subscriber would be paying a higher amount to cover the outstanding payments on the existing contract?

MTN’s response 1 went like this: “Our agent advised Michael that the premium will be R369 for 24 months. She read terms and conditions to him, including the phrase which stipulates that all current contract and handset instalments will not be forfeited.

“MTN offers customers an option to take a 24-month contract or a 36-month contract. For a 24-month contract, the contract becomes due for a renewal from the 21st month.

“Depending on the plan, the customer may have the option to upgrade even earlier, however, they will usually have to pay the remaining device cost of their contract.

“The term 'upgrade' is a standard terminology used by mobile operators across the world and it gives the customer an opportunity to own a new device without necessarily waiting until the contract ends.

“The 'upgrade' can cost less or more than the current contract depending on the customer's preferences.”

A few days later, having listened to the recording of the call in question — forwarded to me by Michael — I went back to MTN with more observations and questions.

Michael’s complaint is that the agent did not disclose he would still be responsible for payment of his existing contract.

Yes, it is true that the monthly amount and the contract term were correctly disclosed.

But the issue is that when these calls are made, it ought to be made abundantly clear that the subscriber will be “upgrading” early and thus be responsible for the remainder of the payments on the existing contract, and for how many months so that they can make an informed decision: to go for the early upgrade or wait until that contract period is up, and they can enter a new one, if they choose to, without having to pay for two contracts for a period of time.

The only mention of that overlap in subscriptions came in the Ts and Cs which the agent raced through at the end of the call, and it’s as clear as mud: “All current handset instalments will not be forfeited upon upgrade. The new handset instalment will be initiated once your current device instalment has been fulfilled.” If that ticks MTN’s box for disclosure, I said, it shouldn’t. “Will not be forfeited” sounds like a perk, and few people would grasp what any of that means, especially read at speed at the very end of the call.

That is not language the average consumer would grasp as “You will be paying for two contracts for a while”.

The number of months’ overlap should be disclosed, I said. Why isn’t it? And why isn’t the fact that it’s an early upgrade with financial implications not disclosed upfront in straight forward language?

That led to response 2. “It is never our intention to mislead our customers, and we apologise to our customer for the confusion that the wording of our terms and conditions may have created.

“In reviewing this matter we believe that there is an opportunity to improve the language relating to the communication to customers around upgrade options, and to this end, interventions are being explored by our customer experience team.”

They’re not conceding that Michael — and all others who’ve been on the receiving end of that script — was misled, but a “belief” that the language could be improved is a start.

“MTN has embarked on a wide-reaching intervention which aims to improve customer experience by establishing simple and transparent systems including clear customer communication, system upgrades and policy redesign,” I was told.

“The first part of this intervention is to give customers an opportunity to voice out their experience with MTN and for us to provide updates on some of the measures that have been taken to improve customer experience particularly fraud prevention, upgrades and billing issues and overall customer journey.

“This will be done via LinkedIn Live session on October 28 and will be hosted by our CEO and chief customer operations officer.”

I shall be virtually there, for sure.

• GET IN TOUCH: You can contact Wendy Knowler for advice with your consumer issues via e-mail: consumer@knowler.co.za or on Twitter: @wendyknowler.

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