Friday, July 8, 2011

VODAFONE - DAY 120


Approaching a hundred and twenty days since my HOME PHONE LINE(s) and BROADBAND SERVICE went OFF.

I kind of figured with the rebranding and change in management of Gh. Telecom to Vodafone that the service they provided to their customers would be improved. Like everything in Ghana that undergoes rebranding, indeed for the first few months and if you are lucky up to a year, you would experience exceptional and over the top service. But like a new product when all the hype about it is gone, that is when you experience its true nature.

My home phone lines(s) and broadband service have been down for nearly 3 and half months. Like every loyal customer, I called the customer care line as soon as I realized the service was down. The person on the other line was so convincing and assured me the problem would be rectified immediately after reporting the issue and that I would receive a call from their field technicians.

I waited a few days and nothing happened so I decided to call one more time to find out what was preventing them from sorting out my issue. Once again the customer care officer reassured me the situation was being handled and since it was in the system, in no time it would be handled.

One week passed, same scenario. Two weeks passed, same problem. Three weeks went by and I picked up my phone once more and made a complaint. This time the response was quite different from what I expected. Apparently the complaint I had made for a while now magically had been resolved without my knowledge. Crazy Huh!! How can a problem I had just reported, be showing on their system as being resolved. What kind of system do they have. If it was resolved I would know. So why am I calling the customer care help line? Is it because of the lovely lady picking up the phone to talk to me or is that I have nothing doing.

So once again another report was made and an apology given. After that I kept calling every other day, even sometimes as late as 10pm only to be given the same response by a semi sleepy customer care personnel. Now the frustration level rises. I then decided to acquire the mobile broadband service. Life get easier and for about a week or two my expenditure sky rockets, that’s when I decided to start calling the help line again. Why is it even called a help line when what you get is added problems. This merry go round got even worse. They kept tossing me from one help line to another help line. Each help line explaining to me they can only report the situation but beyond that they cannot assist me. How can you have a customer care center and the employees over there don’t even know how to help the customers. Do you really want the customers to move to another service provided.

SERIOUSLY it’s approaching a hundred and twenty days (120) since I lost the dialing tone for the house phone and connection for the broadband service. All hope is lost. I guess their slogan “Vodafone is the only total communications solutions provider” isn’t so true after all.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Did He or Did He Not-The Appietus Saga?

Hey blogsville!!!Happy New Year!

So if you guys remember I did a piece[http://asantewarrior.blogspot.com/2010/12/i-borrowed-it-but-forgot-to-tell-you.html] on sampling sometime around December 14th last year. It was about a Cabo Snoop song titled "Windeck" and a track by Zigi from Lynx Entertainment titled "You sey wey tin". I'm not against sampling. Sampling as I said earlier, it is an essential part of the music industry today. A lot of people sample worldwide, the issue is whether the originators of the song are being given credit for the work. If they aren't, then it becomes a big problem. Even the likes of Jay-Z and Kanye West have sampled beats and phrases from different artistes. But none of them have stolen virtually the entire song and tried to pass it off as their own making.

So did Appietus steal/sample the song for 5five's "Move Back"? The way I see it I'd say they did.
After listening to to this track by DJ CNDO released sometime in 2009





and that of 5five can you honestly say that Appietus didn't steal the instrumental?





When asked about this, He said "there is nothing wrong with sampling other musical works" and yes he's totally right about that. There is a possibility that somewhere in this wonderful place we call earth someone is also sampling Appietus's instrumentals.

I think he should just admit and be honest that he stole the beat, and was counting on the fact that most Ghanaians aren't open-minded enough to listen to diverse music from other countries or different genres unless its from Yankee(USA) or from Nigeria.

If we conduct a survey to find out the number of Ghanaians who listen to foreign music excluding those from the USA or Nigeria I have a feeling the pie-chart would be very disappointing.


Back to the topic. Appietus played it very smart when he said "What is stealing if you give credit? The boys have not even released their album, so that one can conclude that they have failed to acknowledge the source of the sampled beat, he urged, advising people should wait for the album before they start talking."

Obviously since he was unlucky and he got caught he's going to now give credit to DJ Cndo. What if he wasn't caught, would he have given DJ Cndo credit or would he have passed the beat off as his own? We all know the answer to that.

People we need to be more creative because we as a people lack that alot.