Customers fume over airtel ‘hard to scratch’ cards

Customers and retailers of Airtel are fuming with rage over the introduction of some unit cards into the market that are hard to scratch.

It could recalled that, the same telecommunication giant, Airtel Ghana Limited, two years ago, rolled out similar unit cards that had its digits numbers blocked, without any prior information to the customers.

So, customers go to buy and the card cannot be loaded onto their phones, compelling some of them to throw away the cards.

Over the past couple of months, the operators of Airtel, one of the leading telecommunications providers, has introduced some beautifully rebranded unit cards in various denominations of the Ghanaian Cedis.

The hard to scratch cards, ranges from ten Cedis, five Cedis, two and one Cedis, circulating on the market; are angering its customers, because of their inability to smoothly scratch the cards.

The ability of the customers to scratch the cards, has led to most of them over scratching the fourteen digits, thereby rendering the purchased cards useless.

Interestingly, the same card, has the inscription “scratch gently’’with serial numbers and expiry date of the card.

The Herald scouts at the Ringway service centre of the company, near the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, can report that the centre, was inundated with customers complaining of not being able to scratch the newly introduced cards.

The scouts, can further report that, the situation is the same at the Accra Mall service centre of the company.

Customers who trooped to the Lapaz service centre for assistance, were left disappointed, because handlers of the centre were themselves helpless.

At one instance, a customer was told to direct her problem to the Accra Mall service centre, since Lapaz branch, is a small office or she should call the customer care helpline for assistance.

Several calls placed to the said help line went unanswered, in sharp departure from what customers were offered during the days of Zain, before metamorphosing into today’s Airtel some years ago.