[kictanet] Fears About Safaricom (was M-PESA for E-Commerce)

[Alex Gakuru]

Indeed Washington you listened and captured my response correctly.
However, Michael Joseph has asked a new very worthy question to
respond to "Alex: Why are you afraid?"

1. Michael Joseph, among other big Telco faces successfully made baby
steps into government and so you will now be getting income and
emoluments from taxpayers kitty! Nation cartoonist last year had an
"MJ for President" cartoon and in retrospect I wonder how much of a
joke that really was. You are now Board member appointed under State
Corporations Act through Kenya of Gazette dated Friday, 29 February,
2008. He will be a colleague serving in a Board chaired by his
"independent" market regulator CCK. Should not any right thinking
person have reasons to be afraid?

2. Today, CCK in Kenya Gazette of 7th March 2008 notice, publishes by
two companies ( Cykim Limited and Intelligent Contacts Solutions)
applying for the protested VAS license.
Why did CCK not wait for the issue to be first resolved before
publishing this notice, unless it had already been decided?

3. Current CCK annual report says that the commission received just 17
consumer complaints in their last reporting year of which they were
able to resolve only four. Perhaps its only me but, I find 17
complaints statistically abnormal considering the industry had over 10
million mobile phone users and 2.7 million internet users. Would
anyone know if CCK were ISO 10002 compliant? I would appreciate that
information very much.

> > Why is everything we do bad? Just because we are big? We got that way by
> > listening to our customers and delivering products and services that
> > they wanted and would use.
> >

4. There have been very dark clouds over your past path. These include
Mobitelea (and others whose fate now hangs in the balance without an
opposition and now you in government now...), charging for undelivered
services (such as sms) blocking access to other networks' services
etc..  I have a couple... The problem is that Safaricom morphed into a
scary uncaring giant fish swallowing anything on its way and CCK sits
watching.

Proposed solution:

The continued loss of faith and now confidence in CCK demonstrated
through above few examples is sufficiently compelling to warrant its
disbandment and to be replaced by another Board made up of persons
with consumer, public, wider industry, business, and particularly
encouraging to SMEs. A new board that will prove beyond a shadow of
doubt that they represent the new Kenya we need where genuine Fair
Play is practiced, everyone small and big have access to prosperity.
The current CCK Board endorsed Michael Joseph to serve with them....
i.e. Regulator and regulated merged.

I shall not be afraid for consumers and myself thereafter.

Alex

On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 8:19 AM, Odhiambo Washington <odhiambo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 6:46 AM, Michael Joseph <MJoseph at safaricom.co.ke>
> wrote:
> > Alex:
> >
> > Why are you afraid? Bill asked a question and we answered it. We could
> > have ignored it but we felt it was good to contribute. We are continuing
> > to develop M-Pesa and this functionality has been in development for
> > some time. We even see a direct connection to the internet for customers
> > to pay on-line just by clicking a link to M-Pesa.
> >
> > Why is everything we do bad? Just because we are big? We got that way by
> > listening to our customers and delivering products and services that
> > they wanted and would use.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Michael
> >
> > CEO
> > Safaricom Limited
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> Hello MJ,
>
> I think you slightly missed the point there. Gakuru is obviously right. It's
> only you who may not admit the facts regarding his fears, but I want to
> believe his fears are well founded.
>  I am not playing Alex Gakuru's advocate but what I believe he meant to say
> was the fact that Safaricom would not be willing to let entities like the
> original poster of this thread to take advantage of a service like M-PESA in
> a way that Safaricom would feel is in direct competition with it.
>  When I initially responded to Harrison Karanja Kairo, the OP, and mentioned
> that he could consult with the product's R&D team at Safaricom, I did say,
> in my initial response something like "I am not sure they are
> allowed/willing to work with you on this as I already see securityissues
> coming up". I was expressing the same fears as Alex in a "diplomatic"
> manner. Perhaps you can prove me wrong, but what Harrison Karanja had wanted
> was something akin to grabbing that magic code that accompies an M-PESA
> transaction and use it to validate a transaction. So, if only to prove
> Gakuru wrong, could you kindly ask Pauline Vaughan to help the OP (one,
> Harrison Karanja) with the necessary advise regarding his query? I don't
> think that will be easy for you, as you are likely to let go of something
> you see already as a great business product, no?
>
> Gakuru did not at all say Safaricom is bad. Well, Safaricom is big, for sure
> as you say, and since you know it, let me also tell you that it's so big
> that it's getting out of control as you are no longer quite capable of
> efficiently "listening to the large number of clientele whenever they have
> problems". This has come up before during a discussion on outsourcing. So
> when you talk of "big", please also consider being "big" in serving the
> customers, and potential competitors like Harrison.
>
> Just my 2 cents, which you can credit to my M-PESA account below:-)
>
>
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Odhiambo WASHINGTON,
> Nairobi,KE
> +254733744121/+254722743223
> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
>
> "Oh My God! They killed init! You Bastards!"
>                         --from a /. post
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