MTN customer service charter

MTN customer service charter

MTN customer service charter

This customer service charter expresses MTN’s commitment to deliver outstanding service to customers, stakeholders and the community. It outlines the service you can expect and the standards by which you can measure our performance.

Consumer rights

You enjoy numerous rights, including the right:

  • not to be discriminated against;
  • to be provided with your required service;
  • to select your own service provider;
  • to receive information in your own language;
  • to access and question records and information we hold;
  • to have your personal data protected;
  • not to have your personal data sold without your permission;
  • to port your number, subject to certain regulations; and
  • to complain and seek redress.

Specific commitments

MTN will:

  • act fairly, reasonably and responsibly in all our dealings;
  • make sure that all services and products are as specified in our licence;
  • comply with all laws and regulations;
  • not discriminate against anyone on any listed or arbitrary ground;
  • be courteous and inform you about our services and pricing;
  • guide you regarding your needs, if you ask us to do so; and
  • protect and keep your personal information confidential;

Awareness and compliance

This Charter is on our website and will be displayed at service outlets.

Call centre

Our call centre numbers are 808 for post-paid and 135 for pre-paid. We answer your calls within 3 minutes and these calls are free from any MTN number. We can also assist you in a number of languages. If you have a disability, you may use alternative methods to contact us; for example by contacting us via direct message if you are hearing impaired.

Contractual terms

When you sign up for a contract with us we must provide you with the following information, unless it is irrelevant and then we will inform you accordingly:

  • Deposit.
  • Connection fee.
  • Administrative fees.
  • Insurance costs.
  • In and out-of-bundle rates.
  • Hardware costs.
  • Possibility of tariff changes during the contract term. You can find this in clause X of your contract.
  • Rules for early termination of a contract prior to expiry of the contract term. You can find this in clause X of your contract.
  • Rules for the carry-over of voice minutes and data.
  • Fair usage policies.
  • Date and period of invoicing.

Promotions

We will provide you with the following information:

  • terms and conditions, including eligibility and fair usage policies;
  • duration;
  • obligations of the end-user on expiry; and
  • all applicable fees associated therewith.

International roaming

When you activate the roaming service we will send you the relevant terms and conditions, which you can also access on our website.

We will also SMS a welcome message to you and the following information may be accessed via a USSD string, which we will provide to you:

  • call centre contact details;
  • voicemail retrieval number and applicable rates;
  • roaming networks available;
  • charges applicable to incoming and outgoing voice, data services and SMS's; and
  • terms and conditions for roaming.

Itemised bill

It so requested we will provide a post-paid itemised bill with the following information:

  • bundled calls (i.e. inclusive voice minutes of an end-user's tariff plan), specifying for each call, "0 cents" for in-bundle calls, date, time, duration and recipient number;
  • calls incurring a charge, specifying for each call, date, time, duration, recipient number and cost;
  • bundled SMS' (i.e. inclusive SMS' of end-user's tariff plan), specifying for each SMS, "0" cents for in-bundle SMS' date, time and recipient number;
  • SMS' incurring charges, specifying charges applicable, date, time and recipient number;
  • in-bundle data (i.e. inclusive data of an end-user's tariff plan), specified for each data session, "0" cents for in-bundle data, date, time and, the total data used;
  • out-of-bundle data specifying charges applicable date, time and total data used;
  • any additional charges incurred by the end-user shall be listed in the "detailed itemised bill"; and
  • applicable billing period with clear start and end dates.

You will also be able to access and retrieve this information online. Please enquire at our stores or call centre. We may recover our costs from you for retrieving itemised billing.

Provision of pre-paid usage report

If so requested we will provide pre-paid itemised billing after validating and confirming that you are the end-user registered to the pre-paid sim-card. Within 14 days we will e-mail, or post if so requested, the itemised bill to you. Please remember itemised billing records are only kept for 3 months. We may recover our costs from you for retrieving itemised billing.

Your prior acceptance and consent is required for out-of-bundle rates. Even if you accept out-of-bundle rates you can opt out at any stage. You may opt in at any stage if you decided not to be billed at out-of-bundle rates. We will also require your acceptance and consent before subscribing to any third party services.

Service upgrades

Interruptions may result from planned service or system upgrades. We will notify affected end-users via SMS and on our website at least 7 days beforehand and again a day before such interruption.

Quality of service

We will measure the availability of the network and quality of service regularly and report to ICASA every 6 months using the following parameters:

Availability of electronic communications network service (ECNS) and electronic communications service (ECS)

Parameter Target
Mobile services 95% network and service availability averaged over 6 months

Time to active services

Parameter Target
Mobile services 99% activation within 48 hours

Fault clearance

Parameter Target
Mobile services 95% of faults cleared within 24 hours

Further parameters

Parameter Target
Average call setup success ratio Average call setup success must be greater than 98% averaged over 6 months
Average call setup time ratio Average call setup time must take less than 20 seconds to set up averaged over 6 months
Average dropped call ratio Average dropped call ratio must be less than 3% averaged over 6 months
Average message transmission success ratio SMS Average message transmission success ratio must be greater than 98% of attempted SMS’ averaged over 6 months
End-to-end delivery time for SMS End-to-end delivery time must be less than 60 seconds averaged over 6 months
Speech quality Average speech quality on the mean opinion score (MOS) must be greater than 3 averaged over 6 months

Rebate

You are entitled to a rebate if you have not received contractual services for which you have already paid. This will only apply if MTN falls below the prescribed quality of service measurement for availability of services, which is 95% averaged over a period of 6 months.

The rebate is limited to the days of service lost and will be pro-rated against your monthly subscription. We also offer a reconnect service for dropped calls at no additional cost. You are unlikely to know that your call has been dropped. Please note that if your call is dropped it may be the fault of the other network you are communicating with, or due to circumstances beyond our control.

Complaints and handling process

All complaints must first be lodged with us and not ICASA.

The point of entry and procedure for lodging complaints is available on our website, display boards at all our service outlets, on invoices for post-paid end-users and any alternate platforms available to pre-paid end-users. To the extent that we do not have service outlets, you may contact our call centre.

If you lodge a billing complaint we will still require you to pay subscription fees and any undisputed contractual charges. But until the complaint is resolved we will not:

  • suspend your service; nor
  • appoint any agency to collect any outstanding amounts from you; nor
  • impose penalties or charge interest on the disputed unpaid portion of the bill.

We will confirm receipt of complaints within 48 hours and allocate a reference number. We will inform you of the number telephonically, via text or e-mail. We will do our best to resolve all complaints within 14 days of receipt.

You may only lodge complaints with ICASA if you dispute the outcome of our resolution of the complaint, or if we fail to respond, or do not adequately respond, to the complaint within 14 days. ICASA’s details are: telephone 011 566 3000; telefax: 011 444 1919 or e-mail: consumer@icasa.org.za.

ICASA will consider a complaint closed if you are satisfied with the outcome of our proposed resolution, or after the complaint has been referred to ICASA’s ADR Committee and has been closed by the ADR Chairperson in writing.

Disputed complaints lodged with ICASA

Receipt of any complaint referred to us by ICASA will be confirmed in writing within 48 hours and resolved within 14 days of receipt. We will inform ICASA in writing how the complaint was resolved.

Impossibility of performance

Circumstances beyond our control may result in outages making it impossible to provide you with service for more than 2 hours. We will notify ICASA in writing and issue a public notice to affected end-users as soon as we know about such outages. We will also indicate when the service is expected to be restored.

We will report to ICASA details of the event/s that made it impossible to perform. With regard to the outage the report will include the cause, steps taken to minimise a repeat, if applicable, and steps taken to inform end-users.​