Lesotho’s communications regulator has found Vodacom Lesotho guilty of unfair market practices.
- The Lesotho Communications Authority has ruled that Vodacom breached consumer-protection laws by imposing airtime restrictions without warning customers.
- It has ordered a full reversal, after 138 subscribers reported unexplained changes to their airtime use.
- The Consumers Protection Association has hailed the ruling as a major win for users against unfair practices.
- Vodacom admitted fault but did not wish to comment further.
In a public notice last week, Lesotho’s communications regulator stated it has found Vodacom Lesotho guilty of an unfair market practice. This comes after subscribers reported unexplained changes to how they could use their airtime packages.
The Lesotho Communications Authority (LCA) says Vodacom failed to provide the required 21-day notice before altering contract terms, and by removing a service without clear prior communication it had engaged in an unfair market practice.
Vodacom was ordered to reverse the airtime restrictions it imposed on its Top-Up Flexi customers. These are customers with a monthly subscription package that includes airtime which they may use for either voice or data bundles.
In May, the LCA issued a notice inviting Vodacom subscribers to report if they had experienced “changes to the usage of airtime” without being informed in advance.
LCA spokesperson Mothepane Kotele said the regulator’s investigation confirmed Vodacom had imposed an airtime-usage restriction without warning.
“This constituted non-compliance with the Consumer Protection Guidelines and Procedures of 2022, the LCA Administrative Rules of 2016, as well as Vodacom’s own approved business rules and terms and conditions,” Kotele said.
While the total number of affected customers can only be determined from Vodacom’s own billing and subscriber records, the LCA “can confirm that it received 138 complaints”.
We asked Vodacom whether it accepted the finding. Spokesperson Lebohang Chefa said, “We are satisfied that all relevant information has been communicated [by the the LCA’s official public notice]”, and Vodacom has “no further comment on this issue”.
The LCA says Vodacom had committed to full regulatory compliance going forward.
Kotele said the LCA’s priority had been ensuring redress for consumers, compelling Vodacom to correct the breach, and putting safeguards in place to prevent similar violations in future.
The LCA had given Vodacom until 26 November to reverse the airtime transfer restriction. The regulator is still verifying whether Vodacom has fully complied and met the deadline.
The LCA urged consumers to continue reporting problems they encounter with airtime transfers.
Consumer Protection Association executive director Nkareng Letsie welcomed the regulator’s actions. “Vodacom should have informed customers in time so they were aware of the changes. It’s a win for consumers for the LCA to uproot anti-competitive strategies. Companies can no longer do as they wish without considering consumer-protection laws,” he said.
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Lack of vocational training: Limited access to vocational training and skills development.
Spunky Sphinx
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.
Feral Mayhem
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