The Voucher Fraud – Big Business?
THE business practice to let recharge vouchers expire is, in my eyes, fraud! Nothing else and no ‘explanation’ of MTC can disguise this ugly fact any longer. It is stealing.
It is taking away from us what belongs to us!
To say that this practice protects the customer is a gross lie – how will the stealing of my assets protect me, Tim Ekandjo? It is astonishing to hear such a statement from MTC; it is disgusting! And it is still more disgusting that our government does not do what any people-friendly government should do, which is to put an end on that foul, criminal practice. The EU did it two years ago already!
The Namibian’s Bottom Line columnist, Milton Louw, and the many concerned groups and individuals are perfectly right. And MTC’s Tim Ekandjo is perfectly wrong! Let us state that there should be no expiry date on any voucher. A voucher is money – even better than money today, because money loses its value under inflationist circumstances. But on one point Ekandjo may be right and that is when he states that customers in our country very seldom complain about the practice – Namibians are by nature and to their disadvantage – not complainers. That should change! To inform this man, I myself lost money this way, but my dealer did nothing about it, said only: “It’s gone, the voucher has expired”.
Most people losing money this way are the poor and the poor do not know their rights. This is partly so because MTC does not inform its customers and MTC has no E-mail or other address one can use to complain; MTC’s bosses are inaccessible. If you try to phone them, the real trouble starts because MTC will let you ‘travel’ from Pontius to Pilate and, by that, the company is making still more money because you have to pay its massive prices. Besides, we do not all have scratch-cards as evidence, we usually receive a slip of paper because we buy our airtime at the vendor-machine. MTC does make money by upholding the fraudulent practice under discussion, unchecked by government or ACC.
It is high time Namibia awakes!
R Regah
By E-mail