[kictanet] How Safaricom lost its way

[Kevin Kamonye]

Mwendwa,

If this is the first time that Safaricom has stolen from you, and I can
tell that this is the case based on the length and detail of your
narrative, then let me just assure you that you are lucky.

I am actually just sad that they are currently the best option that I have
to contend with.

The shameless lies and dismissive denials. That what-will-you-do-anyway
attitude. The mostly rude, ignorant and incompetent customer service.

Regards,

Kevin

ᐧ

On Tue, 11 Dec 2018 at 12:29, Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet <
kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

> It was evening of 7th December 2018.
>
> Consumers had challenges using mpesa from around 6.40pm.
>
> I tried paying for a product, but did not get a response for around 40
> minutes. Then, I got this SMS:
>
> "M-PESA is not able to process your request. Go to M-PESA>My
> account>Update menu>M-PESA PIN>Send. Then try again."
>
> Then this
>
> "MPESA is experiencing delays, and is not able to accept your request.
> Please wait for 10 minutes before trying again."
>
> Then finally after an hour, reality hit home:
>
> "MPESA is currently unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience
> caused."
>
> At this point, people were stranded in weird places. Car owners were
> stranded at petrol stations having ordered full tank hoping to pay with the
> often reliable MPESA. They had to park their car as they sought alternative
> ways to settle their bills. Revelers at the many entertainment joints had
> extended hours trying to pay their bills. Patients at hospitals were turned
> away. Queues and queues of Shoppers at supermarkets left their full baskets
> at tills. Online platforms were not spared either. The shopping carts were
> abandoned.
>
> I was stranded like the rest, and finally managed to pay with the mpesa at
> 8.08pm. See, I was determined. I had consumed products, and I did not have
> any alternative way to pay. That is how successful Safaricom has managed to
> make Mpesa part of our lives.
>
> At around 9.24pm, Safaricom sent this SMS
>
> "M-PESA is undergoing scheduled maintenance."
>
> Of course that downtime was not a scheduled maintenance. So now a
> respected company with a top notch communications team had resorted to
> small lies that add no value to their brand. Desperate times truly calls
> for desperate measures. An unexpected downtime is not the same as scheduled
> maintenance. Scheduled maintenance is communicated early in advance to all
> parties. This was not the case with this particular scenario.
>
> Back to my payment, I manged to sneak in the payment in the midst of the
> "scheduled maintenance". But the deductions of my mpesa balance were
> completely off. I informed the establishment. They investigate from their
> system (which is just mpesa SMSes from their feature phone), and them too
> had got one message indicating my payment.
>
> My previous balance did not add up when the current purchase is included.
> It was way less. The mpesa statement could also not reconcile where the
> difference of my balance had gone. It only showed one transaction. So for
> example, if I had a balance of Ksh20,000, and make a purchase of Ksh5,000,
> the balance should be Ksh15,000. But now my balance read Ksh10,000. Today
> is Tuesday, 11th December, and I'm yet to be united with my funds.
>
> It's good the CS Hon Mucheru has asked for a systems audit of the mpesa
> platform. In the audit, they should capture how many transactions were
> eronouse, and where users' balances disappeared to. It may be mischievous
> individuals carting our balances the NHIF and KPC way.
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