Consumer Complaints Management has been developed by the Consumer Affairs Bureau (CAB) of Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) as a strategy for ensuring consumer protection in the Nigerian telecoms industry.
Consequently, the Commission has designed various channels for telecom consumers to file their complaints using the toll free Code 622, Consumer Web Portal, various Social Media handles, including written complaints from customers.
During 2nd Quarter 2017, a total of 15,377 complaints were received through these complaints channels and resolved to the satisfaction of the complainants.
Consistent with the commission’s 2017 year of the consumer programme and for the benefit of the various stakeholders, we have analysed these complaints as follows;
Complaints by Type
Billing related complaints accounts to about 58% of the number of complaints received by the Commission in Q2 2017 and as a matter of fact, deductions from consumers' accounts for activations of unsolicited Value Added Services (VAS) and SPs' promotions constitute about 80% of the Billing related complaints.
Trend Analysis
A comparison of complaints received in Q 1 and Q 2, 2017 shows a reduction in the Number of Complaints received by 22.06% (as shown in the graph below).
This reduction in number of complaints received can be attributed to the decline in the number of billing related complaints by consumers, from 11,348 in Q1 to 8,838 in Q2 as shown in the graph below.
Further analysis revealed that the introduction of Do-Not- Disturb (DND) service initiative which was designed to curtail unsolicited messages/activations of services led to the decline in the number of Billing complaints, thus resulted to the reduction in the No. of complaints received by the Commission.
NOTES
Billing accounts for the highest number of complaints received during the quarter. i.e 58%, while complaints with respect to SMS/MMS and Value Added Services account for the second and third highest number of complaints received by the Commission i.e 8% and 7% respectively.
Billing related complaints include the following;
- Deductions for activations of unauthorized VAS
- Inaccurate charges
- Charges for unauthorised services
- Charges for unsuccessful calls
- Charges for undelivered SMS
- Inability to change tariff plan
- Deduction for virtual top-up not received
- Charges for Caller Ring Back Tune not downloaded, etc.