MTN has revised the terms and conditions of its AnyTime contracts, with the result that bundled on-network minutes are depleted only after other bundled minutes have been used up. Now customers are calling on the operator to explain the change and amend its advertising.

MTN customer Beverly Patterson is up in arms over the change. She signed up for an AnyTime 750 contract in May, in part because it included 180 on-network minutes a month. She noticed in July that her on-net minutes were no longer being used up first and was told by MTN that in order to use these minutes, she would first need to exhaust her regular bundled minutes.

According to Patterson, MTN claims that this was always meant to be the way the AnyTime contracts functioned, but she believes if that is the case the operator’s advertising is misleading. Furthermore, she says the staff at the MTN stores with whom she’s queried the matter also believe the on-net portion of the contract is meant to be used first.

“I’ve been complaining since 2 August,” Patterson says. “For the first two months of the contract, I checked my balance regularly because it was a new contract. At the end of July, I noticed my MTN-to-MTN minutes weren’t changing but my regular bundled minutes were.”

With her family all being MTN customers, Patterson opted for the AnyTime contract because of how many on-net calls she makes.

Patterson says her queries to MTN were ignored at first but that last week she was told the matter was being investigated and that someone would get back to her.

The change in policy doesn’t make sense given that AnyTime users deplete the bundled on-net SMS messages first, she says. “Why should voice be any different?”

Since Patterson took out her contract in May, MTN has amended its terms and conditions. The new terms suggest that the data and SMS components of the package should be similarly dependent on exhausting the bundled general-purpose airtime first, something they aren’t, she says.

Under MTN’s new approach, in order for customers to take advantage of the on-net minutes, they need to pay out of bundle rates for services like SMS and data.

In written reply to questions from TechCentral, MTN South Africa GM for the consumer segment Mapula Bodibe confirms that from 1 July, customers on MTN AnyTime contracts started depleting their inclusive value before free minutes are provided for use. “MTN South Africa has amended its terms and conditions for the MTN AnyTime promotion to accommodate this change.”