A big thanks to Dygeasy for his recent post that graced front page and also, a big thanks to Nairaland for making it possible for his voice to be heard. Knowing fully well that our outcry on the internet can now be heard/read, I want to use this opportunity to register my gross disappointment with Glo Network. I'm not expecting any refund or some appeasement from Glo but I think it is best I register my displeasure before I dispose off my sim card or stop recharging it, after the expiration of my recent data subscription.

Firstly, I have used Glo constantly, for more than 2 years for both internet subscription (N2,500 on regular basis and I sometimes exhaust my data before month end) and for calls. Therefore it is bad for a network I've used for this long to deliver terrible services to its subscribers and to also secretly subscribe its customers to some fraudulent messaging services. During the period I dropped my Etisalat sim card because of the issue I had with them, I didn't know such a website like this existed, I would have gladly joined and registered my disappointment for public consumption.
The list below outlines, in the shortest possible form, the issues I experienced using Glo:

1. Terrible Call Services: It is normal for Glo to shutdown their services at certain times in the name of network upgrade. I do also experience network issues most times when I make calls in the evenings. Also, I do have to suspend making calls whenever there's a slight chance that rain will fall.

2. Terrible Data Services: Cheap but further proves that cheap services comes with their hitches. I've once failed a job online CBT, sometimes last year, because Glo decided to carry out upgrade and shutdown their data services for two whole weeks. After all my complaints/rants to their customer care agents and their apologies, I continued patronizing Glo. Glo network is also very good at shutting down their data services whenever there's a slight chance that rain will fall.

3. Poor Nationwide Coverage: I feel that Glo has the least nationwide 3G coverage. It would have helped matters if their Edge (2G) network is a little bit effective but alas, their edge network is more terrible than the Econet and MTN GPRS (G) of old (during the times of internet launch in Nigeria). I noticed Glo network is terrible in some parts of Benin City (3rd Junction and Sapele Rd areas), Zaria (some parts of ABU), Onitcha, Abuja (Apo District), etc.

4. Unsolicited Calls and SMS: Since Glo didn't kill me with their unsolicited calls and SMS (including packages I never subscribed for but was billed for and sent messages for a very long time without knowing), no other network will kill me. MTN (the masters of this dreadful and traumatizing act) even tried in the aspect of unsolicited calls and SMS because I once called MTN customer care and complained about it, which they worked on then, even though they didn't stop it completely. However, in the case of Glo, I have registered my disappointment in that regards but nothing was ever done. They continued disturbing me with their useless programmed calls and SMS.

5. Probably the Worst Customer Care Service in Nigeria: I have never contacted Glo customer care during the times of 6:00am to 12:00am and was attended to quickly. Glo customer care probably has a constant and minimum time frame of 30 minutes. I must give credit to Airtel and MTN that upgraded their customer service and hardly exceed the time frame of between 5 - 10 minutes before attending to customers.

Apart from these issues I've been experiencing from Glo, the last straw that broke the elephant's back was the recent happening. I have been in the village attending to some business for a month now. This has made it difficult for me to access the internet at times. Baring in mind that I couldn't use up my last subscription of N2,500 for 4.5GB (now upgraded to 5.0GB) of data, I recharged some money to get my balance to N2,530 in order for my subscription to be automatically renewed.

I still had over 2.5GB of data and was hoping that after the auto renewal, I'd have about 7.5GB to use up when I get back to Lagos. Unknowingly for me, Glo had other plans as they deducted N50 for some scam SMS package they forcefully subscribed me to. This actually dropped my airtime to N2,480 and thus, made my automatic renewal impossible. As a result, I lost my 2.5GB of data.

This angered me seriously and I had to summon up courage (making a 30 minutes call in this period of epileptic power supply is not one bit easy) to call their customer care at the expense of my phone battery. That was when I was told that N50 was deducted for some SMS package I never subscribed for. I was furious and then expected the customer care to tell me that my data and my money will be restored only for her to offer only apologies as the supposed remedy to their incompetence and fraud while also telling me that she has forwarded a complain to have them cancel the SMS package. I had to borrow credit from them, which I don't intend paying back, in order to be able to do my subscription.

If I could stop using Etisalat for browsing (even though they offered the fastest internet connection) simply because they only didn't remind me about my data expiration date and also because their data was expensive back then (I did a subscription of N10,000 for 10GB and was renewing it monthly with a N1,000 for 250MB), then why continue with Glo that offers one of the worst services I've ever used and still scams me. I do also think that our generally poor/terrible consumer behaviour (based on we accepting whatever rubbish being dished out to us even if we pay heavily for it) and the lack of efforts made by monitoring organization like NCC fuels these poor service delivery.

I hereby state on here that, in this life or the next, I will never recharge my Glo sim again. Even if I don't dispose off the sim, its only function will be to receive calls and thank goodness I haven't started printing out my business card and fliers that has my Glo number on them.

Note: below is the text message I received from glo this afternoon (like a care):

Cc Seun, Lalasticlala, Obinoscopy..

so u wrote this? congrats

Ok