Mobile Telephone Networks [MTN] South Africa
Reviews and Complaints

My fiance and I were convinced by an mtn consultant (Owen engelbrecht) to move from the vodacom service provider to the mtn service provider. What a mistake! First day into the contract we only received half of what we were promised, two weeks into the contract we realised that we were lied to about the terms and conditions, a month later we were migrated when we asked for the contract to be cancelled. (We are still waiting for him to get back to us on the cancellation). Owen has blocked us from ever social network possible, he hides when we enter his store (Eikestad mall) and spins stories for his friends to cover him in the store. He told us that mtn steals airtime from people and that is no lie, my fiance and I have never loaded airtime and had the chance to use it as it would disappear not long after. I advise anyone that ever thought of going to mtn that it would be the worst mistake of your life. We are going to take this further as I refuse to sit stuck with this for 2 years because of a corrupt sales person and the whole of mtn working with him on this to not lose a deal. Wow I have never experienced this with vodacom in 15 years.

Mtn what will you do about this?

I sent an email to MTN's customer care on 23 October 2015, at 08:30, querying my October Statement. Firstly the address is wrong. It says Abbotsford, when it should say Sandringham - I asked if this could be fixed as all the forms I filled out say Sandringham. Secondly I queried why a payment that was debited from my account on 1 October is still showing as unpaid. I do not want to be responsible for paying this again. I heard nothing from them. I then sent a follow up email on the same day at 18:30. I received an auto response saying the query has been received and someone would get back to me. Reference number: #[protected]. I received absolutely NO response. I then sent an email to [protected]@mtn.co.za on 27 October 2015, at 16:41. I finally received a response from Kelebogile Matlala, on 29 October, 2015, at 08:46, who requested some information for security purposes. I responded. I had one query query and asked that she please advise how I could find this info (this email response was sent on 29 October 2015, at 16:12). I received no further correspondence back. I sent a follow up email AGAIN on 3 November 2015, at 16:35. No reply. I send another email to customer care hoping that someone would eventually answer me. This email was sent on 5 November at 18:29. It has now been 2 weeks and I am no closer to an answer. I am at a loss at to how to get this issue resolved. I will NOT call the customer care line, because that goes unanswered. There is no point in going to a branch to get this resolved. The last time I did that, I waited 3 hours before someone was available to talk to me. I don't see why I should be penalised for a fault on MTN's side.

I stay in cococabana way, malibu village, blue downs, eerste river in cape town. For the last three months our signal has deteriorated remarkably. We have to run outside to receive a call and besides the sound quality being poor, the call is more often than not lost before the conversation is completed. We have tried several different phones with no noticeable improvement. I am self employed and depend heavily on my cellphone. I have checked with my neighbours and they have / had similar complaints. (Some have already changed to another network). I would appreciate it if you could resolve this matter asap. Thanks.

In June this year a call centre agent called me offering me an upgrade which I was reluctant to take up – upon realising that the contract was open, I refused to take up the offer and spent some time discussing my discomfort with this option. The agent said the package would notify me when I have reached my call and data limits offering me an option to continue or cap. I told him that I would prefer a cap, to this he said that it was not possible at a call centre level and that I would need to go into a branch – to this I agreed and proceeded with the upgrade. I requested a champagne and midnight blue option – and was told this was not guaranteed but I took a chance. When the phones arrived, they were both wrong and so I returned them with the courier guy, however, the new package had already been uploaded onto the phones. Upon return of the phones, I received a call from the call centre asking about the issue experienced with the phone – I advised that it was a colour thing and that I will go and do the upgrade in store. Later that week my phone balances all went to R0.00 but the phone and data lines were open – that same weekend I went to the store to enquire about it and do an upgrade. This was during the strike period and so the Morningside branch was closed that Saturday. I returned the following week – and helped by a gentleman called Vincent, he picked up that the upgrade could not be effected as the previous one had not been cancelled – also that there was no cap on my phone and that I could only upgrade once the cancellation was effected. Now, because there was no cap of the lines and no notification – calls overran (No fault of my own) – Vincent loaded a number of queries on the line to try resolve the issue. In addition to this he put a cap to the lines and so immediately I received a number of notifications that my airtime and data had been depleted and so I had to use a top-up option. At that time – the balance on my account was reflecting as R1400.00 – which I do not believe I am liable for because I was very clear to the call centre agent that uncomfortable with an open contract – I was assured that this would not be an issue – but eventually ended up as an issue. I left and was advised to return the following week to complete the upgrade, which I did. Amongst other things – my phone did not work for 3/ 4 days and was stranded with no working phone in the Eastern Cape. The line was opened after I loaded a compliant on HelloPeter. Little did I know that my issue was far from resolved – I had no airtime, data or sms in the month of August and had to top-up myself. In trying to deal with the issue – Vincent advised that the were some subscriptions running on one of the lines and gave me instructions on how to cancel them – which I did. Now – if this is created an overrun in the bill – I am not liable because I requested that a cap be put on the phone at the time of the first contract and the time I first met with Vincent to resolve the issue – so it would be unfair that I be liable after actively trying to resolve the issue and requested a cap twice. If it wasn’t effected – It is not my fault. I then received a debit order of about R5000.00 – I have no idea what the make-up of this was and so believe that I am not liable for this either because 1) the initial overrun was created by incorrect information by the call centre agent as to how the package works in regards to call limits 2) MTN had a strike when I came to understand and resolve the issue and the branch was closed that Saturday 3) A cap was effected when I eventually got help, the package was cancelled and a new upgrade effected with a strict instruction to load a cap on both accounts – if there were overruns, I am not liable as I requested a cap which means any overruns would need to come from a top-up. Irritated by the amount of times my line has been blocked with no call or explanation by MTN and I met a lady called Mbali who also tried to help me and gave me new references and advised that this should solve my problems Ref #[protected], 5400684, 5338369). I did not receive confirmation on whether the issue had been resolved – my line was then cut again. I again had to come into the branch and was helped by another consultant Dinel – who opened up my lines and asked that I email him with the reference numbers and he would attempt to assist me in resolving the issue – I received no response as to the resolution of this and am sitting now with a blocked line. Another HelloPeter compliant was issued somewhere in-between, but Lo and Behold I sit here at exactly 22h00PM 5 October 2015 – I can make no calls, send not text messages or WhatsApp messages. I was at MTN this weekend too, and was assisted by Bassie who highlighted that additional charges were being charged as one of the lines is loading MTN via *141*… now I go back to my previous statement, on a normal package this amount would go off one’s airtime balance – in this case it is billing to the contract, however, if the limit is reached why are additional costs being allowed to pass through? What purpose does a cap serve? Bassie advised me to come in during the week to speak to one of the managers – feeling defeated I left, knowing that “I work as well” would fall on deaf ears. Earlier today – I made a number of calls to the number 083 1 808 – no one at the call centre could assist and sent me to either another number or email address. Below is the number of calls I made to the number with the details: 1. First call – 14h00 – I explained my situation to the agent was given the #[protected], dialled the number twice and each call was cancelled 2. Second call – 14h06 – I was told that the number I was given does not work and that I should email #[protected]@mtn.co.za, emailed twice and both emails bounced 3. Third call – 14h32 – I was told to email customer care, received an email from Bhekumuzi Ngwenya who just said make payment – I explained my situation and Katlego Motseki said I should phone 083 1 808 4. Fourth call – 17h30 – I was told that my reference number could not be picked up at the call centre and that I should email retentions.[protected]@mtn.co.za This is my last resort with MTN – following this I’m going to report this issue to the Ombudsman because despite my attempts to reach out to MTN to resolve the issue – no one is willing or able to assist! The desired outcome – the bill of R6000 should be written off as this was caused by an upgrade gone and subsequently cancelled. Any amount that exceeds the package should be cancelled either as a cap on the limit exists for this very reason and so I cannot be liable for additional costs. I have been making payments via eft: - R813.00 (30 June – June debit order) Paid R804.40 (10 Jul – June payment) - 1, 425.05 (31 Jul – July debit order) debited and bounced (Incorrect due to issues created by the upgrade) - R5, 425.24 (31 August – August debit order) debited and bounced (Incorrect due to issues created by the upgrade and cap not effected correctly) - Paid R1700 (02 Sep – Jul & Aug payment) - Outstanding payment is for September – the exact amount needs to be worked out as the statements issued aren’t clear as they are a combination of errors

Every month I purchase extra data from mtn and evey month they steals 300 - 500mb of my data. It supposedly expires. I am so tierd of mtn stealing from me. Add up over an year period how much data we all cant use that mtn just steals back and then sells it back to us. This is sure and simple fraud !. Why is there an expiry date. To force the customer to buy more. Just like price fixing scam. Its illegal to steal and yet big companies can steal from us all and we can't do anything. If you steal from them, well then you go to jail. How is that just or fair? When are we going to stand together and do something about mtn? Why do we allow them to steal from us. Refuse to pay them and you get black listed. How do we, honest south africans get justice without getting black listed? When I asked them why, they compared it to milk! If you dont use your milk it expires. How can they say that. Shouldn't it be my right to use up my data. Every single byte? Mtn really needs a good kick in the nuts! Or its time to get an ceo thats not an baboon! If mtn charged peanuts for their services, monkeys and baboons in the top brass would of been understandable!

I have been struggling now for 2 months to get mtn to get their act together and I am not winning. The level of incompetence is severely high with not being able to help me with a simple thing. For the last two months I have been charged + / - r3200 to much on my account because mtn has the inability to work their systems or to load contracts correctly. I have 2.5 gb on my one contract, which mtn politely "forgot" to add to the contract. Therefore as I browse I get billed... R3200 for 500 mb usage. I phoned, I e-mailed, I complained, I got aggressive, I was nice, mtn can just not help. They just don't care! Mtn is quick enough to cut your line when you don't pay, but pathetic to fix their mistake. I am fed up with this poor quality and pathetic service from mtn. Now you... Mtn... Tell me what must I do to get this resolved?!

On the 14 may 2015 I received my samsung s6 via mtn direct. On the 22 july 2015 I gave the phone to fourways mall ref [protected] imei [protected] when the phone overheated and died on me. On the 7 august 2015 after numerous calls I finally found out that fourways mall had not sent the correct paper work to the repairs center and that the phone had been returned to fourways. I contacted fourways and they called me back to say that the phone had gone back to repairs and that they will only be able to give me a ref number on tuesday 11 august I finally got the col [protected] and I must get hold of mtn sales [protected] to have the phone replaced. They informed me that they cannot help me as this phone is under my company name and should get hold of 809 the business center. They informed me that they could not help me as they only deal with upgrade and new contracts and I should go to mtn sales or go to fourways who informed me they could not issue me a replacement because I received this phone from mtn direct and that I am not registered on their system. They where helpful on the 19 august and told me that the business center will get back to me by end of business on thursday as they are unable to trace my details on their system. I am still waiting information from them and cannot reach anyone to get closure on this matter. I have a transaction number 8519 and a ref [protected] till 017 invoice [protected] all this information was sent to your repair center. But you don't seem to be able to trace this phone I expect you to send me a new phone a credit for the month of july - august as I have not had a handset and compensation for the amount of time I have wasted in calls and loss of business due to your incompetence in this matter

This is more than a month later and we are stuck with the same issue again. My mother copied in the below communication: I went back to menlyn retail mtn & ndash; to take all our documents to mr willem bronkhosrt and he promised that he would correct everything as mtn incorrectly loaded our new contracts & ndash; as per attached. No we have received another bill and clearly the issues have not been resolved and we are again billed becaused of your reluctance and non existing customer service. I urge you to fix this matter immediately and I will also be logging the matter with hello peter again. Your service and lack is customer care is shocking as my mother and I have never experienced such bad service from mtn.

To whom it may concern,

My cellphone and my mother’s cellphones were both suspended for outgoing calls on sunday the 21st of june 2015, for reasons that are completely incorrect.

Firstly & ndash; my contract is under my mothers name emily maria van barrelo (Copied in this e-mail) and I am writing this e-mail on both our behalves as my mother resides in the western cape in ladismith and I reside in pretoria.

My mother enquired on monday the 22nd of june at mtn shop in ladismith to find out why our line were cut and she was informed that some or other & ldquo;contracts” were loaded and that there is nothing we can do about it.

I have attached the contracts that were signed in my presence at menlyn retail park in pretoria on the 10th of april, and I have also included our itemized billings and invoices and nowhere does it indicate that we are in arrears or owe money to mtn & ndash; including all debit orders have been deducted accordingly.

Please could you investigate this and repair the services that you have wrongly disconnected as a matter of urgency. I will also be taking the matter to hello peter and the national consumer commission as this is unacceptable.

You can contact my mother emily on [protected] or myself beverley salmon & ndash; [protected]

Two months ago I had a major problem with the service of MTN (they still did not come back to me concerning this issue either.) So, for the month of June, I did not use my MTN sim card at all to investigate their tendency of over billing as I was over billed for the month of December as well!).
The sim card was out of a handset completely for a month and two week as I replaced it with another cell company's pay-as-you-go sim card. My pay-as-you-go usage for the month was about R500 as I only use data. I very seldom send any sms's and never phone.
Now, my contract phone on MTN costs about R500 per month and my contract itself is about R300 per month. They just billed me an amount of R2060.00 for the month of JUNE! For a sim card I did not even use!
I will take this up with the South African Ombutsman and Consumer Board. I am so sick of MTN as I had three serious issues with you in the past six months and you have done nothing to assist me. If I could cancel my contract with you, I would (After being a customer for 20years!)
The other issue was that I had my brand new phone for 3 months when the screen cracked and MTN refused to fix it unless I pay you a ridiculous amount stipulated on a quote that I also have not recieved. I was without a phone for 3 months.
During the month of December I went overseas for 10 days (Thailand). I did not put my phone on international roaming (I even went to their branch to confirm this issue) as I cannot afford it. I therefor did not use the sim card during those 10 days at all.
I was billed R3090.00 for December! When I queried this at a local branch, they just agreed that they could not understand this...thats all.
If I do not get response from you concerning how you are going to CORRECT ALL three these issues, I will take very drastic measures... I promise!
Please help!
Ms. AC Erasmus
[protected]
Tel.no : [protected]

Sir/madam,
I am sure that I have been ripped off on 23-24 june 2015, regarding my habitual on line data usage.
I have lodged a complaint to the supplier webmaster as a query of the possibility of such an issue but have
Received nothing regarding this matter.
What can I do to elicit an response ?

Sincerely.

E. W. Swanepoel.
Mtn reference ; [#[protected]]
My account ; no132211

i bought a 24hour uncapped data bundle from mtn. sadly i am disappointed in it reason being is after following all the procedures i have a bandwidth speed of 15KBPS this is absurd. thinking that perhaps the network was probably flooded i decided to wait a couple of hours. after becoming impatient as it hasn't moved a single byte faster i decided to check it up on the net. now i see that there's t&c's anyway i read it up and realize that there has been a speed limit set to 128kbps but...it clearly has not even come close to that speed im really disappointed in it and prefer to know what, when and how this problem is going to be solved otherwise you will be losing customers big time and from some of the complaints i have seen already about this, clearly there is something wrong.PLEASE HELP and sort it out.

For the last 3 months i have done my payment via EFT and they suspend my line anyway. I have gone into the store and submitted my complaint and they opened my line but 3 hours later they suspended it again. And when i call 083 808 they inform you that they have technical disruptions and that their call centre is closed and to please try again later. This is a monthly problem and MTN does nothing to fix this problem.

I took out a contract for my wife, but the phone was stolen from her bag in a shop. We went through all the steps to block the phone, report it to the police, get a case number, blacklist the sim card. This happed on the 20th of February. When i send a mail to their costumer complaints, i get a mail back saying, "5 working days to resolve".
When i cal the MTN main office, i have to hold on for about an hour before speaking to some one, . Then i am transfered to the insurance department, again having to hold on for an hour. Even if i speak to a specific person, and resend the claim form to him/her specifically, there is just no resolve. I have been paying my account ever since, but i get no service. I sent a mail trying to cancel the contract, I tried through their web sight, and through Nashua mobile's sight, but i can't even find the number on the system. What must i do? In my opinion this is fraud, because i can not just stop paying, but i get no service. Please help? I don't have the proof of the mails or documents that i filled any more. Got lost some how.

I have a cell phone contract with mtn so I lost my phone and I had to do a sim swap, I went to mtn to do it and they said it gonna take 1to 2 days for the card to active but that ner happed so I called there customer service and I where they told that there no sim swap done in my account meamwhile I paid R137 for it the guy who was helping said it done but my phone's still off.what do I do now, I'm very angry because I have to go back to them with who's money plus I'm working I don't get time to go there this is very irritating for the big company like this

@ MTN SP they bill me wrobgfully by charging me open contract fees of over R900+ while I signed for a TopUp Contract. Each month my bill is to high due to this then they block my line and I must struggle with unpleasant MTN consultants about it, and they log my complaint 50% of the time. My cellphone went in for repairs I had it in my possession for max 45 days while it was in repairs for 2 months and I tried to get insurance before the crack of my cellphone screne and was wrongfully informed of the process and therefor is not insured and have to pay an amount of R2991 to be able to get my phone back and was given a time limit of 7days to pay.
This is the worst serve I can imagine for a service provider.
I do not want to pay my phone infact I believe I am not entitled due to my struggles with MTN SP since Oct 2014.
Please get back to me

I went to mtn in stoneridge to port my cell phone number from cell c to mtn. Cell c stopped working within 2 hours, yet mtn did not activate after 24 hours. I went back to the mtn shop, where they agreed the mtn sim card issued by them was faulty. I had to wait another 24 hours for the number to port to the faulty sim card, than mtn would do a sim swap. Nothing happened ant I went back to the mtn shop in stoneridge, where the sim card was replaced. Another 24 hours passed and mtn still failed to activate my cellular number. By now it was monday and thus a working day. Again I went to mtn stoneridge for the 4th time, where a puzzled staff now had to rely on a call centre to have it sorted. The number had now to be ported back to the old cellc sim card, for than to start all over again.In the meantime 7 days have passed and mtn has still not been able to port the number back to the cell c sim card. Which means my number has been deactivated for 7 days which include 4 working days. It is hard to understand that mtn is incapable of solving this matter and sadly I can only conclude they are not interested in customer service at all.

I asked my sister to go and pay for my contract phone so she used an ATM to pay and unfortunately she messed up some digits and upon realising this I emailed MTN and they requsted that I send proof of which I did and they promised to help ref #9214733 and they sent me an SMS telling me to pay or be suspended and I payed again then they suspended my service then I phoned them then they connected me again, now they keep billing me pretending that the payment I made on the 2nd of Dec 2014 does not exist. In february I will part ways with MTN as per end of contract they are cheaters.

Sir/madam,
Notwithstanding 21 days of deliberation and consultation with mtn call centre 1761, the following must be noted with certain dismay :
As a holder of a contract of a previous nashua mobile service provider, now defunct, I need to register with a third party sp viz. Mtn
Sa.
My dilemma is the inability on both sides to register successfully on line mtn.Co. Za.
By choice I need this value added service for the ad hoc purchasing of top up pay as you go airtime and internet data bundles/bolts from time to time.

Sincerely.
E. W. Swanepoel.

Subscribed for blackberry 9720 on the 22 may 2014 imei no [protected]. Phone got 1 year warranty. On the 28 septemer it wasn't charging booked it in on the 29th it came back on the 6th october not fixed, no report. Job no m369916 after countless fights with serah naidoo told me the process takes upto 72days I should not b complaining for 2weeks (Phone is with me already). 13 october they sent pictures saying its ber with a fall damage that broke the motherboard. Phone got no scratches or cracks then emailed complaints and customer care they just forward me to hvrc.29 0ctober I went to repair centre montague gardens to ask about the fall damage they made calls and took pic of my phone sent to the person on the phone, said will get back to us but I could not wait the whole day I left without getting feedback. Now they emailed me apologising for the inconvinience they caused but haven't rectified anything. Hvrc is telling me the samething over again that it is ber.

I bought my apple iphone 5s (It was an upgrade) on the 23rd of may 2014. On 16. 06. 2014 I took the phone back to mtn in ellisras / onverwaght and told them the speaker doesnt work, I cannot hear people talking to me. I spoke to johandre lottering in the shop. Johandre booked my phone in as a technical fault report and said the phone should be back in ten days. After ten days I went in to see if my phone was back and johandre said it wasnt back, he told me it should be in by the end of the week. I phoned in on the friday and johandre said it should be there on the monday. Already impatient by now, I phoned again on the monday and I spoke to a lady by the name maria. She said the phone wasnt in and said that their provider didnt have spare parts and that I should wait a while. I got upset and phoned their service provider, who told me that my "find my iphone" was activated and they cant touch the phone until it is deactivated. I got angry because in 15 days nobody bothered to phone me and tell me this. I was told to deactivate it online. The next day I deactivated it and phoned the provider to tell them that I have deactivated it and that they can go ahead and work on the phone. To my frustration, they told me that they have couried the phone back to ellisras and that it would take 2 days to get there. On the 11th of july 2014 my husband phoned mtn head office on [protected] and spoke to mongezi. Mongezi said the phone should have been booked in as a warranty assesment and not a fault report as it was still under warranty. I insisted on a new phone but she said that the phone must be sent back and approved by apple before I can get a new phone, this would take another 10 working days! I went into mtn in ellisras / onverwaght in a very upset state. I again spoke to johandre and he confirmed that the phone was in the store. He said he would fill in the warranty assesment form and send the phone in. I asked him to give me a copy of the warranty assessment form that he was going to send with the phone and he told me not to worry, to trust him that he will do it and send it asap. Today the 22nd of july 2014, I went to the store to see if my phone was back, johandre was not there as he was sent to another branch. I spoke to maria and she was very happy to give me my "repaired phone", when I looked at my phone and the paper work I saw that the phone had actually not even been sent in again. It had stayed in the store since I spoke to johandre on the 11th. When I spoke to the manager, bennie. He said that I must bring in my contract and my box and they will have to send it in again for a warranty assessment, meaning I will be without my brand new phone for a further 3 weeks. I asked the manager if they cant give me a brand new phone from the store and just take this phone back, do a sim swop and charge johandre for it. He said he will phone his boss and ask her. She said no, I must send the phone back. I have in the meantime been charged for my first months service. A service I am not receiving, a phone I am unable to use as it is not in my possession. I have been with mtn for 18 years and have never ever had a problem until now. I find this completely unacceptable!