I went a Tigo transfer vender at Akropong in the Eastern Region to transfer some credit onto my tigo phone and met this highly agitated vendor (almost in tears) who almost vented his bottled anger on me. I was about the 10th customer to have asked for the service that morning- around 8 am. Unfortunately, he had to turn away all these good business. His reasons? Well this was due to what he termed “anti-business practices” by Tigo in recent times. According to him, Tigo has restricted vendors to particular “wholesalers” in the transfer business such that each vendor is linked to a particular wholesaler. If that wholesaler does not have credit to sell , you the vendor CANNOT buy from any other wholesaler. According to him, Akropong, like many other large towns has only one wholesaler, and this guy “almost always” has no credit to sell to the many vendors in the town. His major frustration that morning was that this wholesaler had some credit to sell but could not sell to him because his number is linked to another chip which did not have credit on. I was told that some months back, the vendors could buy from any wholesaler any where just like MTN and Vodafone are doing. He could just call another wholesaler in Accra or Koforidua who would just send him the credit in no time.
Incidentally, this was about the 3rd time I had encountered similar compliants even in Accra. I don’t know what strategy Tigo is using in marketing their product. The little I know about economics is that competition brings about improvement in service delivery. I wonder what strategy this is? Monopolistic strategy? In this world? I think this is breeding inefficiency in the system. We are hooked unto the Tigo network … but hey, the competition is stiff. I did not get credit transfered unto my phone that day and so did not enjoy the tripple bonus that was advertised just because all the transfer vendors up there were linked (by Tigo) to this particular wholesaler, and he did not have the credit to give out. I think Tigo owns us an explanation for this. I agree with this young man that this is an ANTI-BUSINESS practice and they have to do something about it. TIGO, Libralise the market PLEASE!!!!!!
