Terms and Conditions apply!

The need to write this piece was borne after one of my numerous encounters with one of the customer service personnel of Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN) who practically gave me the impression as though she was doing me a favor.

“Hello and welcome to MTN, your call will be recorded for training purposes. For Twi, press one, for Ga, press two, bla, bla, bla….” And the pre-recorded voice trails off unless otherwise, but I doubt if they do retrieve and playback those back-up tapes for the said training or they just are learning other things I’m not privy to.

Undoubtedly, MTN is one of the biggest Telecommunication Companies who has fallen sub-par the giant status they carry about and as the best when it comes to provision of Telecommunication services. It’s rightfully so, because it looks like, they have shifted their focus from their core objective of up-time and reliable provision of services to sponsoring of programmes and provision of corporate social responsibilities. 

The lady in question made me look stupid for subscribing to their network. Her actions, depicted by the way she interacted with me also gave me the impression that I could stop subscribing to their network if I like and still there would be millions of Ghanaians who will patronize them. And, all I could ask myself after that dead-end call for help was to ask myself why I was still hooked on to their grid. I felt the need to stop using any services that had to do with telecom services, but, you know what that meant. I was going to severe ties with friends and family since there would be no form of communication, neither would I be able to publish this post. I would be perpetually out of coverage area and you can imagine how I would fare.

While pondering over the series of the appalling services these Telcos provide us, I came to the conclusion that we as a clientele base contributes to the shambolic services these service providers in tend provides us. We don’t take our part of the various contracts seriously, which is why these companies always have a field day. 

Modern dispensation has made it imperative for us as a people to continually go into contracts we are not even aware of, which unfortunately have legal bindings on us. These contracts if explored to the letter and the clauses thereof can get us into serious troubles our families cannot even redeem us from.

If you have a presence on social media, be it Twitter, Whatsapp, Facebook, Picasa, Tumblr, Foursquare, Instagram and what have you, then chances are that, you have entered into a contract with a third party application provider just by installing the application, which is usually free of charge.  As to if there are embedded costs and how this companies fare, would be another topic for later discussion.

How many of us take our time to actually read the License Agreements that comes with these soft wares? How do you know your rights and responsibilities that come with installation of these applications? How do you know your responsibilities with regards to the liabilities therein, should something happen?  How can you even sue these companies when all you did was to just click ‘next’, ‘next’ and then ‘finish’ to get your application running?

Somewhere in 2004, I managed to read the License Agreement that comes with Microsoft Windows operating systems, specifically that of Windows98 during one of my installation sessions to the very end, even though it was not making sense. I had to because I figured it was not there for its own sake. It’s purpose-driven and for a reason. 

Usually, these contracts state at the bottom of the License Agreements that “You are now aware of your rights. Click next to continue” and I ask, are we not allowing ourselves to be led to the slaughter house by just consenting to these agreements without knowing what they entail?

All these contracts and transactions have terms and conditions applying to them and it is what we should be looking out for, to see for ourselves what will be in stock for us should we validate such contracts to full blown statuses. 

Our ignorance about these terms and conditions that applies also accounts for the reason why some people win raffles but are not able to redeem their prizes. These companies know most of us will not have the time to read this supposed ‘chaff’ and this only plays advantageously to their gallery. They sure know that you will be found wanting when the day of reckoning comes, so beware.

We have to take some of these things seriously so that customer service personnel of service provider companies should not feel like they are doing us a favor since they would have known that we have actually read and understood the terms and conditions that applies, thus our rights!