Dear
Bob Collymore:
Earlier this Saturday 20th of July night (it is summer in my former hometown of Toronto where my 22 year old son lives with his mother; winter in Durban where my younger sister misses her twenty something daughter polishing her Spanish in Ecuador and chilly in Nairobi) I used 234 to access your customer care people.
When they finally came to the phone, this was the gist of my bitter complaint:
I live around the Pipeline area in the Eastlands part of Nairobi, close to the Taj Mall end of the Eastern By Pass. I have a Safaricom line on my Android powered Enspire smart phone. I also have a Safaricom modem loaded with mega tonnes of data bundles.
If I want to make a simple phone call, sometimes I have to perch on my toilet seat or lean over my kitchen sink. In fact the customer care guy I was dealing with kept telling to go “somewhere” where there was “network” since he could barely catch a word I was saying. In exasperation, I patiently explained to him that this was precisely WHY I was calling- to COMPLAIN about poor reception.
If I want to get on the internet, I fall down on my knees and pray very hard. My supplications to high heaven are never answered- I guess there is extremely poor network even in those celestial neighbourhoods.
Apart from Safaricom, I have modems sold to me enthusiastically by your rivals- Airtel and Orange. But they do not work either. Since you have neither acquired nor merged with either mobile service provider, I will concentrate on Safaricom, of which you are the reigning head honcho.
About three years and three months ago, whilst I was residing in nearby Donholm, just off Outer Ring Road, half a block from where Jogoo ends on that roundabout which leads either to Tena and Umoja or Pipeline and Embakasi depending on your ultimate destination, I made a similar earnest call to Safaricom, citing the same network problem.
My complaint was dutifully and diligently recorded. I even had an official service number assigned to my case.
All very good.
Except that exactly ZILCH happened to that matter. By the time I moved to my current residence barely a month ago, NOTHING had been done to install the long promised booster to enhance reception.
Today at around 2300 hours I received the following text message from Safaricom:
“Dear Customer, Service Request 1-4BC2UHH was created under your subscriber 0715 XXX XXX.”
At least the Customer Care rep followed up on his pledge to file an official report.
But what happens now?
Will I have to wait for three more years to ruefully discover that Safaricom does NOT, as a matter of fact, CARE about its millions of subscribers?
Especially if they live in the Eastlands section of the city, as opposed to say, Runda, Karen, Gigiri, Loresho, Muthaiga or Kitisuru?
We are already stuck with the infernal Jogoo Road/Outer Ring day long traffic grid lock which costs millions of shillings in lost person hours as workers and professionals trudge along at slower than snail pace to get to town which should take a maximum of twenty minutes.
Now for those of us who feel we are digitally connected enough to telecommute via our smart phones, high speed modems and other devices we find ourselves stuck in the information superhighway because the richest company in East Africa is reluctant to do anything about mobile and internet connectivity.
Mr. Collymore, you have decades of experience overseeing major mobile networks in the UK, Japan and now Kenya. I do not have to give you a pep talk on the digital divide. Our country boasts that it is on the cutting edge of the information and communication technological revolution sweeping across the African continent. We claim to be the regional economic hub, indeed the hearbeat of the East and Central African economy.
But do we really deserve these accolades when residents of the Kenyan capital can not make a simple phone call or get internet access on the platform of the most successful mobile service provider, Safaricom?
Mr. Collymore, short of committing suicide in utter frustration, should I just give up and emigrate, say to Marrakesh, Morocco, Dhaka, Bangla Desh or the capital city of your own country of origin,
Bridgetown, Barbados?
Sincerely,
Onyango Oloo
Dunia Sizzle 