Citizens, expats express dissatisfaction over poor telecom services

RIYADH: Many citizens and expats have expressed resentment and dissatisfaction over services provided by telecom companies that may have a negative impact on the credibility of these companies.

Some of these customers said telecom companies are only focusing on profits, sometimes ignoring quality of services and “promises” they make to customers through their promotional offers.

Hussein Mohamed, a teacher, said that he went to get a data card as a company made an offer for SR300 to get unlimited Internet for three months. The customer service employee told him that afterwards, the customer could renew the data card but, surprisingly, when he went to buy the card he discovered that it was SR360, and not SR300 as was announced earlier.

Hussein continued saying, “after three months I went to the company to recharge as I was instructed by the customer service employee, but I discovered that they had stopped the recharging service and if I wanted to have the offer again I would either have to buy a new data card for SR360, or to use a limited usage data plan instead.”

In a similar manner, a woman, who asked for anonymity, said that she had a postpaid number and she was traveling abroad for a vacation so she needed to make it work abroad.

Accordingly, she went to the customer service employee asking for that service and she was asked to pay SR 500 in order to make it roaming. Unfortunately, when she reached her destination country, she discovered that the line was disconnected and was not operational, she told Arab News angrily.

Abdulsalam M., a Saudi citizen, said, “I used to have a postpaid number but every month the telecom company kept putting on extra charges, so I decided to stop it and filed a request to stop.

“After a while, I found that they disconnected the number, but the monthly billing did not stop and they wanted me to pay it, even though I had filed a request to cancel it,” he complained.