No nonsense businessman George Prokas was taught from an early age that you need to stand up for yourself. During his dispute with South African network provider Cell C that is exactly what he did, he literally took it to the streets.
“If you’re first in the queue, you’re first in the queue,” says Prokas.
In 2012, Prokas applied for two cellphone contracts for his children. In 2013, one of the phones needed to be repaired. Being a relatively new phone, Prokas handed it in to the network provider in expectation of a new phone. What he got was the run around.
“Eventually we were getting bounced from pillar to post. After about eight months, I kept going back to the store. I went there, my daughter went there, my wife went there. I screamed the whole of Sandton City (shopping mall) down. We were just falling on deaf ears and in the meantime I was paying the account, I didn’t have the phone but was still paying for the account. The last time I went to Cell C, I had an argument with a guy who runs the store after telling him I was going to stop paying. He laughed at me and said ‘you can’t stop paying because you signed a contract’. I said ‘I beg your pardon; I put my surname on a piece of paper to honor an obligation on a service you have not given me, until I get the phone back I am never going to pay,’” he recalls.
Prokas kept his word and stopped paying for the phone he did not have. A few months later, Prokas walked into a dealership to purchase a car for his wife, the bank turned him down, he was furious. The reason for the rejection was emailed to him soon after and he could not believe it. Cell C had listed Prokas with the credit bureau because he stopped paying for the broken cellphone account.
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Prokas tried to solve his problem. He called the Cell C call center, he sent emails and he even tried to locate the owner of the store he was dealing with. With no joy he decided to take more radical action.
He placed a banner – that cost him over R60,000 ($5,200) – on a very busy intersection in Johannesburg. It read: Cell C – the most useless service provider in SA.
Prokas warned Cell C about the banner but they did not budge.
“I sent the mock-up of the banner to Cell C via email. I said ‘if you don’t solve my problem this is what’s going up’. I was looking for a solution and somebody to talk to,” says Prokas.
With his lawyer by his side, Prokas did as promised and put up the banner. Soon after, the banner broke out on social media and Cell C went to court. The High Court in Johannesburg dismissed an application for an interdict by the service provider to have his banner removed. Prokas won the case, got his legal fees covered and kept his banner.
“Cell C had acted incorrectly, they never addressed his concerns, not once,” says Raymond Druker, Prokas’ lawyer.
“What George has put up on that banner was not defamatory, it was fair comment.”
According to a study done by global market research agency Ipsos, the banner brought home that most people have become accustomed to inferior service.
“He (Prokas) basically vocalized what I think a lot of people are experiencing but they don’t have the means or the personality to do what he did. He set such a precedent by doing what he did,” says Renita Kramer, Head of Loyalty Research at Ipsos South Africa.
Ipsos adds that it’s become more important than ever for companies to pay attention to their customers and solve their problems.
Sifiso Falala, CEO of Plus 94, a market intelligence company, has recently released the Plus94it app, a mobile app that allows South Africans to share their experiences in the service industry with the people responsible for those experiences. The app receives over 1,000 comments a month.
“The majority of the consumers that come on to the app are frustrated. We get things like they are too big to care about the little guys, once they concluded the sale they are not concerned with the quality of the product or service,” says Falala.
“Mobile telephonic companies and network service providers tend to really irritate people to a large extent.”
“There has always been a principle in law that contracts can’t be against public policy, but the overriding law in South Africa is that people are bound by what they sign. But you can’t require people to pay when you don’t give them the service they’re paying for. But it hasn’t gotten to the point where if you get bad service you are legally entitled to stop paying. There is a lot of development that has to happen along those lines,” says Druker.
Cell C responded to the matter by saying: “Cell C has resolved the matter with Mr Prokas and has nothing further to add over and above what has already been communicated through various media channels. Cell C is continuously improving its customer service across the various touch points of the business, including the franchises.”
Otherwise the banner of indignation could rise again.
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