Cell C will compensate BlackBerry clients

14 Oct 2011

Mobile network operator, Cell C says that it will compensate thousands of BlackBerry users in South Africa for the service disruption they suffered when a core switch failed within the parent company Research in Motion says Business Report.

Moreover, Virgin Mobile has confirmed that it will give all its clients a refund of R50 in additional airtime with immediate effect. Virgin Mobile's chief executive Steve Bailey says that rather than provide customers with a pro rata credit next month, Virgin will give them R50 in airtime.

The BlackBerry crash disrupted email and instant messaging services for millions of users around Europe, the Middle East and Africa and then spread to Asia, Central America and eventually North America.

In South Africa an estimated 1,5-million users of BlackBerry services were directly affected and this was compounded by further service disruptions at Vodacom that left some of the other users without BlackBerry services.

Cell C says that it will give each of its BlackBerry customers a R10 deduction on the BlackBerry Internet and Enterprise services for the month of October and will also provide them with 10 free SMSs for the time they could not use the BlackBerry Messenger service.

Cell C stressed that while it had not role in the service disruption it wants to compensate customers for the frustration and loss of service as a gesture of goodwill.

Read the full article on www.iol.co.za.

Paddy Hartdegen

About Paddy Hartdegen

Paddy Hartdegen has been working as a journalist and writer for the past 40 years since his first article was published in the Sunday Tribune when he was just 16-years-old. He has written 13 books, edited a plethora of business-to-business publications and written for most of the major newspapers in South Africa.