DAMMAM, 7 May — The launch of the prepaid SAWA cards in the Eastern Province by the Saudi Telecom Company (STC) has been nothing short of a fiasco.
The billion-dollar profit-making STC, geared up for privatization and enjoying a total monopoly here in the Kingdom, has once again shown how the best interests of its customers are not at the top of its list of business priorities.
Everyone here in the Eastern Province was hoping that STC would at least organize professionally the distribution of its SAWA cards.
However, on April 27 those hopes were cruelly dashed.
The STC office in Dammam was a scene of total chaos. Advertisements placed by STC in all of the nation’s dailies had stated that the chips could be purchased from 10 designated agents, or from any STC office.
However, in Dammam even getting the application form proved to be a Herculean task. There was no queuing system at the main STC branch. Instead, the reception was staffed by a security guard, who at times seemed more baffled at the procedure for acquiring a SAWA card than the customers themselves. Customers rudely jostled one other, as though they were trying to get into a football match.
After finally managing to get hold of a form, customers rushed over to the Arab National Bank (ANB).
Unlike elsewhere in the Kingdom, residents in the Eastern Province are having to deposit the SR200 charge at a designated bank, and then return to the STC office with the receipt.
But there was no counter dealing with SAWA applications at the bank itself. Card seekers were seen dragging themselves from one counter to another, eventually to be informed by a clearly disgruntled employee that the required deposit slip had already run out.
“Go to another bank,” customers were advised.
Near the ANB is the Al-Rajhi Banking and Investment Corporation. Again, the poor security guard had been pushed into the front lines, and all he had to defend himself with was bad news: that branch, too, was refusing to accept deposits for prepaid SAWA chips. So the crowd headed off to the National Commercial Bank (NCB), just across the street.
The NCB security guard initially told them the same story. Then he amended this statement by saying that the bank would now indeed be taking deposits — but for SR300!
The deposit slip dutifully handed out was, almost needless to say, entirely in Arabic.
A number of the tired and furious customers were so fed up that they decided to pay the requested SR300.
An hour later, after all the formalities had been completed, they were shocked to learn that what they had in fact paid for was a family mobile, limited to eight numbers only. This is precisely the service they had been avoiding for so long in the tediously prolonged run-up to the launch of SAWA itself.
The confusion at STC was exploited by private vendors, who immediately declared the chips to be “out of stock”.
However, prepaid cards were mysteriously available for SR200 to those who were willing to buy cellular phones.
And then news filtered through that there were indeed chips available: for the princely sum of SR275.
Many retailers still claiming to be “out of stock” accepted SR200 as a deposit, promising that the SAWA card would be available two days later.
However, as of yesterday those cards had still not arrived, and customers were being met by staff well versed in the phrase “Bukra, Inshallah”.
In Alkhobar, the first three days saw private vendors issuing chips as promised for SR200. However, their supply soon dried up, and in the twin cities the black market in prepaid chips is now rampant.
STC yesterday at last decided to act, announcing that they will fine retailers who inflate the fixed prices for prepaid mobile chips. It remains to be seen, however, whether or not this action on their part will prove too little, too late.
Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about this whole fiasco is the fact that STC delayed the launch of SAWA by nearly a month to ensure that everything would go smoothly.
