I have read lots of compalints on newspapers. I have listened many times how phone users, specially mobile cell users, complain on the radio and the tv. A couple of people affected by mobile cos practices have told me personally about suffering abuses. And I could not give any credit to my ears and eyes. Now I myself and my daughter are experiencing some of those abusing practices I was once warned against.
I have definitely left Vodafone and signed with Movistar, but Vodafone doesn’t want to get informed and keeps on billing me for the service that this company is not providing to me any more. And this happens, despite I have protested again and again and expalined more than three times to the phone operators working at Vodaphone’s client deparment – an actual nuisance- the reason why I have changed to Movistar. In my case the problem is that the British multinational can’t offer me the service at the location where I need it, because the company has no coverage there.
I have now before my very eyes the claim figures published by the Spanish Office for the Attention to the Users of Telecommunications Services (OAUTS).
During the year 2009 this Office received complains 30,423, a 23.3% more than in 2008.
The number of questions raised to this bureau remained more or less stable, but the cases related to mobile phone services grew a 88% over the figure registered in 2008, reaching nearly a half -a 45%- of the total raised by the users before the OAUTS last year.
Problems at the time to terminate the contract and conflicts related to the sms services are the main reasons why the consumers are complaining against the telecom companies in Spain.
Beware the telecom co behind the cell inside your pocket! . Signing up a contract is easy but terminating it,… that’s another tale. And they fall back on saying that their billing system do not allow them to solve the mistake definitively or keep on trying to trick one with other excuses the like. So the former client must keep on making phone calls to the company pointing the mistaken billing one time and another, while the telecom co keeps on improperly charging the client’s bank account.
Then the former client gets fed up and, annoyed, becoming into a hostile agent willing to discourange other potential clients.
Telecom companies, and they are all of them who are committing this kind of “pranks” in Spain, are not precisely putting themselves out of their own miseries whenever they behave like this.
Actually their missbehavior leads to a true aberrant situation. They are going against their marketing philosophy and literally wasting a great part of the huge amounts of money invested in promos, advertising and communication. All these, leaving aside the fact that they are seriously damaging the image of the whole telecom sector.
If old Fajin returned to life, he would surely feel as he were one of “his children” learning from their street-savvy master. Sure Fajin could hardly have an edge against these white collar stealing-savvy digital billing masters , I guess.
Image over the headline.- Bank robber phones behind dungeon bars. © Eastwind.
