Cellphone contract is like forced marriage
October 21, 2009
 By Ann Crotty
Just another 232 days to go. I am so excited. I will be celebrating with appropriate levels of abandon mixed, perhaps, with a tiny amount of alcohol. You see, next June my two-year contract with Vodacom expires.
Of course, to call it a contract is a little misleading, suggesting as it does an agreement between two consenting adults. I see my arrangement with Vodacom as being more in the order of a sentence; I was forced, if not kicking and screaming, which is not encouraged in a Johannesburg mall, then certainly very reluctantly into an arrangement, a sort of forced marriage with a corporate institution.
I hate relationships with corporate institutions beyond the mutually very caring one that exists between me and my employer, Independent Newspapers. These relationships, with their initial veneer of concern for your welfare as they scribble down all your financial details, are inevitably designed to extract as much as possible from the individual. That's how business works and that's fine; I choose to keep my corporate relationships to an absolute minimum.
So imagine my horror when 17 or so months ago I decided to get a cellphone? I had a choice of pre-paid or a two-year contract. There was the additional choice of continuing life without a cellphone but I was going to be on the move for the next while so that wasn't really a choice. And the reality is that because everybody else has a cellphone, you are expected to have one.
I kept asking this nice guy at Vodacom the same question in a different way, hoping that he might give me a different answer. I was hoping that I might be able to give them my bank details and they could just debit my account on a monthly basis; maybe even give them a generous deposit for them to hold onto until they got to know me better.
No. It was two years or nothing.
"That's longer than a lot of marriages last these days."
"Sorry, two years or nothing."
Apparently it was because Vodacom was "giving" me a "free" phone.
"A friend has given me an old phone, I don't need or want your 'free' phone."
"Sorry, two years or nothing."
I know - from the movies - that in many arranged marriages the individuals eventually get to like each other. This is not happening with me and Vodacom. Seventeen months later and a relationship that started out strained has become unbearable. The firm takes money out of my account even in the months that I have not made or received one call. This is market failure at its abusive worst.
So it was with great anticipation that I pitched up to last week's parliamentary hearings. The robust engagement with the senior executives of this oligopoly was encouraging. At last some of "the big gorillas" were being asked to explain the contrived pricing mechanics of this industry. The fact that, like horribly spoilt children, they had been allowed to run riot through the economy for so many years might explain why their answers were so feeble.
It was ironic to hear members of the parliamentary committee chiding the competition authorities for not restraining these gorillas. Over the years the only attempts made to challenge these gorillas were made by the competition authorities. Unfortunately, successful lobbying by the gorillas had not only rendered Parliament and the Independent Communications Authority of SA ineffective but had ensured that our cellular operators were free from the restraints of competition legislation.
It will take more than a few days of parliamentary hearings to effect a change in this appalling situation. Meanwhile I can't wait for next June.
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