I was priviledged to have activated Areeba’s GPRS, way back in December 2004. I did a review, about the experience, on Mobile Africa: Spacefon Areeba’s GPRS. A preview. The cellular network was then branded “Spacefon Areeba”.
Areeba Ghana started billing for the service, 17 months later. I did not activate the service when the billing began, because I found the charges prohibitive, and the activation fee, ridiculous. The process was that customers had to go the nearest customer service centre, and must have at least 150 units on their prepaid account, and would bring along a “registration fee” of 50,000 cedis. Being a heavy internet user, I found paying 19,500 cedis per megabyte (MB) of data, way too high. I could easy use up almost 400,000 cedis each day and that would not be economical.
Tigo’s GPRS has been lousy in recent times, where I stay. So yesterday, after buying a new Nokia 3230, I decided to go activate GPRS on my Areeba number. I went through all the process, but almost 24 hours later, I’m told to report again at their nearest office with my receipt. The service is not activated on my phone! The cheek of it. To think that I went through all that bureaucracy for nothing? I have called customer service 3 times, but now have to go their, again. Waste of man-hours.
Why is Areeba charging an activation fee for GPRS when they’d eventually make profit from the customer using the service anyway?
Why is Areeba not activating the service over-the-air, like Tigo is doing? What kind of network would insist on having their customers visit their office to have a service activated? Even if they must charge for activation, why not simply deduct from the customer’s airtime? Why insist on the customer’s physical presence?
Tigo’ GPRS is simple and straight-forward. Go to www.tigo.com.gh and click on “CLICK HERE TO GET GPRS NOW >>” right on their homepage. Alternatively send WAP and the name of your phone to 777. eg, send “wap nokia 3230” to 777 on your Tigo, and the settings would be sent to you via SMS. You activate the settings, re-start your phone later, and you are connected. No activation fees.
Why wouldn’t Areeba make things simple and straight-forward?
Would I care about GPRS if Ghana Telecom was more efficient and had fixed phone lines in more places?
I’m so upset.
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