Viva Le Tricheur! Cheating Reptiles
Viva Viva Viva, they need bringing to heel and NOW! For those far afield, Viva is an arm of the Saudi Telecomms Company operating in Bahrain and around the Gulf. In 2018, Viva purchased a smaller 4G Internet provider by the name of Mena Telecoms, which was previously owned by Kuwait Finance House. Having been a very loyal customer of Mena since its inception more than 15 years ago, the real troubles began when Viva took over. It is a bit like the Hong Kong-China issue, whereby Mena’s independence is being/has been eroded away.
We as a family, company whatever, DO NOT WANT A VIVA subscription, In fact we do not want anything to do with VIVA, but we were forced into it due to ‘Take Over Action’. To my knowledge, nobody, not a single subscriber was offered or indeed challenged Viva to opt out of an existing contract if they chose, for whatever reason, but mainly because they did NOT want to be associated with Viva. Well I did! I was however reminded that the contract is still with Mena, albeit controlled by Viva. Viva will continue to meddle and niggle until the end of those contracts and no doubt eventually decide not to allow anyone to renew a Mena package, instead require customers to switch to a more expensive Viva package. It is not rocket science to assume that Viva’s ultimate goal is to wipe anything related to the name Mena off the face of the earth. After all, the KLM/Air France link up is tenuous to say the least and for Air France to survive, it will surely have to become less French. The psychology of Viva now is really that already. They certainly do give the impression that Mena ‘doesn’t exist’ already.
Furthermore, Viva’s behaviour was predicted many moons ago, in these very columns and blogs on Facebook.
In this post it is Viva who bear the brunt of this hideous fiasco which is allowed to persist in Bahrain.
Once Viva acquired Mena Telecom, it was suspected that the latter’s service will suffer, whereby there might be covert activity to hamper Mena’s access or indeed steal array positioning to better Viva coverage and hamper the Mena signal further. All designed to frustrate Mena customers. Already those who live by the sea, such as the Amwaj island, suffer backside arrays simply because Viva prefer to point them at more dense areas inland. The service in this area now begs the dustbin it is so patchy. This very activity was confirmed by an insider, who is contracted to install and maintain arrays. His words were; “Yes of course we do that, it is our prerogative and you should mind your own business”. Charming Indian fellow at that.
What was not expected was the speed at which the degradation materialized. Within the first week, Mena signal strength degraded. Many times, the Internet went off altogether. The engineers apologized and put it down to network upgrades and that all would be better soon. It wasn’t! Slowly but surely, the network has degraded to the extent that now, it is off more than it is on and that means up to 4 or 5 times a minute sometimes. Not all of that is deliberate with some outside antennas being the new Huawei omni directional device which simply drop out 4 or 5 times a minute sometimes, as they hunt for stronger (or weaker) frequencies. One cannot imagine how bad it is for an internal receiver. (More below).
It is also suspected that with the advent of 5G, within one year, we will see select customer areas have their 4G network deliberately degraded, just as Zain and Viva did with 3G. Batelco did not do this as far as I am aware. No proof is forthcoming, there is no Wikileaks in Bahrain.
For many months now, on making endless calls and registering complaints about this extremely poor service, tickets numbers are ‘deliberately’ not shared by SMS with customers it would seem. This way the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has no evidence when presented with complaints. Not that they do much or appear so customer sympathetic anyway.
After yet one more call to the Mena agent, advising that I was about to cut the line permanently as I had heard nothing for over 1 week, today: 22nd August 2019, a Viva rep. called. Normally we deal with Mena and prefer, because the Viva guys always seem to have an excuse or some edge and never appear to be quite halal. We were not disappointed. The rep’s rapport’ was straight forward: “We will not fix your system unless you sign a new contract”. The end, Amen! Well, don’t beat about the bush there Viva, say it like it is and get to the point. They want to hold you to ransom and at their mercy for another 2 years. It was a recorded call too. Blatant to say the least….. Can you believe it?!? On top of that, it is highly unlikely that Viva will indeed improve the ‘Mena’ reception, again cajoling and haranguing one to change to the more costly Viva. One imagines that the agent’s statement is deemed a ‘threat’ or that if Viva are allowed to do this, it is indeed illegal, but who is going to challenge them?
Oh what a lovely way to induce loyalty with its customers. In the house, we are still on contract until November, bills always paid on time, not much animosity. Viva on the other hand are obsessed with contracts and manipulation, it drives them with venom should anyone dare to challenge their ethics. Worse than those childish Europeans who now throw tantrums for the British Brexit. Fear Viva, fear them muchly for they will imply you are a low-life cheat trying to do ‘THEM’ out of a 2 year commitment should any issues arise. Trigger happy to impose travel bans too for as little as Seven Dinars, a monthly subscription fee. That too cannot be legal, but somehow they get around it with nothing less that a phone call one assumes.
For a while at its inception, Viva took the nation by storm, boasting the ‘Fastest 4G Internet’. Because they have a fibre light pipe linking Bahrain, straight out through Saudi, so their statement was somewhat true! But now it’s just BS. Others had to use either Batelco’s minuscule gateway or struggle with satellites and shared underwater community facilities. In fact, they still do, but clearing, downlink forwarding and distribution has improved from the Gulf generally and we can almost watch an HD Youtube video now without it stalling, except at weekends and late at night.
We speak here of Home Broadband, but of course mobile coverage is almost one and the same. In this area, Mena has/had the strongest reach with the others nowhere near as desirable or optimal. Fibre is being rolled out, but the areas are extremely selective and one is left wondering if politics or religion doesn’t play a large part in which areas get what. In particular the Northern new development areas should have had cables laid when it was just sand a little over 3 years ago. But no, deemed too expensive for Bahrain Telecommunications (Batelco). 10 years of asking, 10 years of ignoring. Now it will be much more expensive to install cable since the area is now built up and has roads, God Bless! Good planning there then Batelco. Even so, when the country is covered in fibre, there is ONLY ONE company offering a Gateway at the end of it…. Sing along now; “Oh chokey chokey chokey. Although it is thought that at least one other company has a licence to lay it as a result of other take overs. But…..why would they bother though and go to all that expense? Batelco are forced to share their cables with all other companies.
There are other entities in Bahrain which could offer super fast MPLS gateway facilities (Multiprotocol Label Switching) to the nation, out to say London or Europe, bypassing the Gulf bottleneck, where IP protocol rejoins the World Wide Web and extremely efficiently at that, but…. and there always is a ‘but’, in Bahrain…. It is highly unlikely for the time being that a wide spread commercial licence will be re-issued under the current government mandate. Tch Tch! Telecoms is keenly watched by the authorities for what they bring in or more to the point; push out! Watched they may be, but only from a current affairs point of view. They are not at all watched for their modus operandi from a customer’s point of view.
In this story, it is Viva who bear the brunt of this hideous fiasco which is allowed to persist in Bahrain. Zain, used to get a very rough ride, but they are pussy cats by comparison these days. Indeed, the corporate psyche and structure between Zain and Viva is completely different, as again it is between those companies and Batelco. Batelco is still the sweetest by far and quite possibly the most efficient by far, not to mention the most approachable in general.
Having experienced Viva’s Marketing and PR personnel in the past, their cocky, dismissive superiority is more than evident, and no doubt reflects the attitude across the entire company. Obviously, so cocky they probably don’t have a department monitoring negative press and even if they do, nobody appears to care. Already it is now over 3 years and we have another on going dispute which Viva cannot win since their own lawyers dismissed the case as ludicrous, but still we get billed electronically 3 or 4 times a day sometimes. Nobody not a single person in any department was concerned or able or willing to deal with our complaint, other than the ‘Call out the Dogs’ department buried somewhere deep in accounts. The fact that we had no service or no device was totally irrelevant.
After contacting the TRA and eventually in seething desperation, sitting in the VIVA building, a management representative nonchalantly descended to see us, bored out of her brain listening to our woes. Albeit a lovely girl, she informed us that she would go back upstairs to ask Management once more, but she knew the outcome; ‘So many people try and cheat us, they sign for a package for 1 or 2 years and then stop paying after a month or so’. She happily suggests we are among those deviants. Is anyone surprised customers fail to pay when Viva fail to offer what is advertised.
The young lady returned very shortly after and informed us that there was nothing we could do as she reiterated; we are considered ‘cheaters’, we must pay 1 year’s subscription despite us having not a single microwave byte over the house, or indeed a device to receive it. In fact, Viva made ‘us’ take the device back to their office the first day because it did not work. They should have collected it. There it stayed and there is where it all began. They already made $200 advance out of us for absolutely nothing. If in Europe, the States or UK, a lawyer would have a field day suing their ass for creating unnecessary stress and trauma threatening court action and sending the hit squad in, in the form of NCS (debt collecting agency) which they do. Incidentally, NCS know no manners and go straight for the jugular without trial. It has certainly raised my blood pressure and perhaps I could claim that it was Viva who stressed me so much I had to have heart surgery during Ramadan in 2017.
5G now, but let’s face it, the three main mobile providers and one Internet provider (The rest share), never got their act together with 3G, never mind 4G. It is not much short of a joke really and don’t hold your breath, 5G will be worse.
It is 2019 and in some areas of this tiny Island of Bahrain, smaller than the Isle of White, these telecom companies present a system not fit for purpose. Shocking, when one can pretty much visit anywhere in Bangladesh and 4G coverage is superb, yet it is referred to as a 3rd World Country and least developed (although it has just risen above that label in 2019).
The blue light means no signal and this flashes as least 3 times each minute and sometimes stays alight for 10-15 seconds. All 3 lights should be yellow/green.
Viva’s new Huawei omni- directional receivers, designed to roam the various frequencies within the cell to eliminate drop-outs, actually cause them. These are not well thought out for Bahrain, where there are tower restrictions. Hence every few seconds, your receiver will hunt and rather than sum, they appear to subtract, leaving the user with no signal.
No problem if you are just browsing, but if on a P2P or watching Television, your signal stalls, often as many as 3 or 4 times within a minute as mentioned. As we approach 2020, this is shameful for a so-called developed nation.
Besides, anything Huawei, is mere cheap plastic all singing – all dancing temporary toys as everything Chinese device generally is. More expensive Ericsson networks built like tanks will surpass anything Chinese.
There must be enough discontented folk/customers to raise an army, all meandering around Bahrain, thoroughly sick to death of this Viva’s and other telecom companies constant underhand modus operandi. Where do they get this attitude from? Viva’s Saudi nemesis and mentors no doubt. Elsewhere in the civilized world, they would be taken to task by the courts, never mind a barrage of Social Media fire which the main stream media will pick up. Unfortunately Bahrain has NO MAIN STREAM MEDIA of any worth.
Imagine if we all descended on Viva’s door step at the same time demanding retribution, the management would just sit on the top floors and throw contents of piss pots over us. Their arrogance is astounding.
Depressed customers, feeling totally helpless as no recourse is available to them, while incredibly arrogant Viva continue to run rough shod and manipulate an extremely passive nation which allows them to do EXACTLY as they please. Furthermore, you are on your own buddy, as the nation quivers with reluctance to challenge.
The few that tolerate my rants will know that I have maintained that the Viva Modus Operandi at management level is nothing short of scam low-life Time-Share mentality. Customers are merely an inconvenience for this privileged conglomerate. No shame! Viva etiquette is now well established among their employees, who no doubt need the job, so go with the flow, fearing any remote sympathy for customers detected will probably be met with termination. There is absolutely Sweet F.A. we as the people, the customers, the payers can do about it! I can blog as much as I like. The anti Viva Facebook pages are full of it, but bad PR seems irrelevant to them.
Of course, many Middle Eastern companies coddle their indifference, never fearing any backlash or comeuppance. It is a Bahrain trait and mindset, whereby lip service is paid to the nation, but individually little faith or acceptance of knowledge or qualification is considered, so who is to argue and we are all friends anyway. But the underlying under estimation is there. Hence Bahraini prefer to be treated medically outside of Bahrain for example, yet there are ‘some’ perfectly good and very talented doctors here. One must assume the telecom companies think the same about their customers. Their tricks and testy behaviour never ends. This latest escapade is yet one more predictable element. ‘Ah, nobody qualified to challenge us, so forget it’ they think! Well I am qualified in the field and I will challenge in anyway that I can. I am also an accredited journalist, recognized by the government of Bahrain. Among other things, new laws state clearly that journalists now have freedom and cannot be prosecuted for naming and shaming when holes have been dug. One hopes that more will highlight now that they are not receiving any advertising revenue this days, which always prevented any critique.
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