In accordance with prophecy, @MTNza extort money from me.

Screen Shot 2013-09-09 at 2.31.03 PMSo, a couple of months ago, I decided to become a prepaid cellphone customer, after having been a contract customer of MTN’s pretty much since cellphones become a thing in South Africa. At least two friends will vouch for the fact that I said, when plotting my escape from the contract, that MTN would find a way to get an extra month’s subscription out of me. And lo, it has now come to pass.

MTN – I was unsure if I wanted to port or not, and was going to wait to see who had the next phone I wanted before deciding on that. It’s probably fair to say that you’ve made the decision a little easier.

Let’s start with this screencap from their website:

Screen Shot 2013-09-09 at 2.03.43 PM

So, given that my contract expired on September 8, my email of August 8 requested cancellation, as well as migration to prepaid. As requested, by their website. I know that they got this email, because they replied to it, today, 32 days later, after I had yelled at someone on the phone.

MTN

You’d think the email would be enough. But given the cynicism expressed by the prophesy I had made, I also went into an MTN shop that day (August 8, 31 days before expiry). In front of me, I have the fax, sent by the staff there to head office, requesting a move to prepaid. The store clerk said neither the fax, nor my email, were necessary – because things don’t work that way. He said I should just call 808 (customer service) when my contract expired.

I said, that makes no sense. Because when my contract expires, it will roll over to month-to-month on the same terms. So, if I were to call on September 9 (the first day of being out-of-contract), I’d already be committed to another billing cycle. He said, no, you’ll be fine. I said, no, your website says 30 days, and that makes more sense. So please send the faxes.

And then Saturday came, the day before my contract was to expire. So, just to make sure of everything, I called 808. They said they can do nothing for me, and that I should call back on Monday. I said, okay, but that’s a new billing cycle – given that I have emailed a month’s notice, and faxed the same, I take it I won’t be charged for a whole new month? They said, you’ll be fine.

Today, I call at 8am, and request that the cancellation and migration to prepaid take effect. Have you used the airtime and data, I’m asked? Well, I shouldn’t have any – my contract terminates yesterday, and in fact, I shouldn’t be able to call you right now, I guess, seeing as I’m out of contract. “Oh no, sir – you’re now on a new billing cycle, ending October 8. If we convert you to prepaid now, you’ll lose your minutes and data”.

As predicted. And instead of going through this again on October 8, I said cancel, immediately. I know I’ll lose the minutes and the data, and that you have extorted R450-ish from me, thanks to not following the procedures you ask me, your customer, to follow on your website. So, anyone else wanting to leave MTN, be advised that they sometimes seem to keep you hostage when you do. Well played, you got your ransom.

Help is at hand

Yes, life is sometimes somewhat perplexing. Who to trust, what to read, and “what the hell did she mean by that?”. And that’s just to mention a few of the problems humans have had to face ever since we figured out how to communicate. But now, the stakes are higher, what with Google making us stupid (or, stupid making us Google), and the information overload generally taxing our attention-deficit disorders.

We’ve all received those emails where it’s not quite clear whether the sender is joking, or perhaps laying on some not-so-obvious sarcasm. One of the things readers have to do in these instances is some interpretive work, where you try to balance what you know about the person, and your history of correspondence with them, in order to determine the implicit meaning of a sentence or letter. This activity is most likely beneficial to us in some respects, as we practice our interpretive skills, and perhaps learn a little about psychology along the way.

And viewed from the perspective of the sender, conveying subtleties in the absence of face-to-face communication is also sometimes a challenging task – and one that we become better at through exercising the skills in question. For some, though, both the reading and the writing tasks described above are simply too much effort. Would it not be just great if you can dispense with the whole bother of trying to craft a sentence, and provide the reader with some completely unambiguous clue as to how to interpret your utterance?

SarcMarkYes it would, say Sarcasm, Inc. – the inventors of the SarcMark – who also tell us that the this symbol (denoting sarcasm) “makes punctuation cool again”, and also claim that by using the new SarcMark, “you’ll never be misunderstood again”. How cool is that? As pointed out by The Guardian:

The real breakthrough of Sarcasm, Inc is the realisation that, despite having used sarcasm and irony in the written word for hundreds of years, humans are simply too stupid to consistently recognise when someone has said the opposite of what they mean. The SarcMark solves that problem … Our prayers are answered.

This must surely be the dawning of a new and exciting era in communication. With the SarcMark as precedent, we will no doubt discover all sorts of ways in which we could be more efficient at communication. If you’re angry, or sad, or disappointed, you’ll be able to say exactly that with some clever punctuation mark – perhaps in increasing size depending on the depth of your feelings.

Gizmodo really said it all with the title of their article responding to this innovation:

SarcMark: For when you’re not smart enough to express sarcasm online.