You may be wondering why I would refer to a supposed internet service provider (ISP) as a bank, well, let me narrate to you my experience with Jamii Telecommunications Limited (JTL) and their Faiba Home service.

See, previously we did a feature on the terrible state of Zuku’s internet but at least with Zuku you get a connection that turns out to be terrible. My experience with JTL has been rather frustrating, not because the internet connection is horrible (which it is btw) but rather, getting a connection itself is the hell on earth.

The Following Takes Place Between Aug 26 and Sep 26

On the 26th of August (which happens to be my birthday –  I am telling you this whether you care or not), I visited JTL’s website and submitted an application to get connected to their Faiba Home product.

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Hats off to the company for making the application process simple and straight forward but if I knew the kind of spaghetti mess that would follow, I would have sort alternatives. Now back to the narrative, JTL confirmed receipt of my application and requested a payment of Kes.5,000 for their 30Mbps package.

On August 29th, the payment was made and JTL confirmed the same 24 hours later with a promise to complete installation within 8 working days, a promise that JTL would choose to go the politician’s way with.

The dates quickly hit September 10th and I was yet to get any communication from JTL. Being the patient human that I am, I decided to get in touch with the customer care only for my quest for answers hit a wall.

Then came September 12th, second follow-up initiated. This time around, I decided to give JTL’s customer care a piece of my mind, coupled with some threats:

It’s been 14 days (10 working days assuming JTL does not care about its customers on Saturdays and Sundays) since I made a payment of Kes.5,000 for a Faiba Home connection…

13 days since you emailed me to inform me that the connection would be made within 8 days…

4 days since I decided to pay for a similar service from your competitor…

I do not have the energy to keep chasing JTL for a connection. I paid for the service, either deliver by end of the day (my day ends at 5 pm) Friday 13 September 2019 or simply refund my money and I can find a service provider that values their customers.

Failure to which I shall have no other option but to pursue legal reprieve because I do not understand why JTL should keep my money yet I do not remember the company getting any accreditation from the CBK to become a bank.

Like clockwork, this threat seemed to have worked as by end of the same day, JTL’s team was in my premises doing the first round of installation, where the router got installed.

Going by my experience with other ISPs, I thought that within an hour, I’d be enjoying super fast internet the Faiba way, mbosi weh, was I wrong.

Without boring you with the details, let’s jump to September 16th – four days after the router was installed. The team is back, this time around with the unfortunate news that there’s some technical difficulty in getting signal on my end.

Solution? I now have to wait until September 20th for them to resolve the issue. Let’s be reasonable, right? We give them the benefit of the doubt.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

September 24th and still riding on a red light. Reached out to JTL once again and, you guessed it, they gave a promise to resolve the issue within 24 hours.

To my relief, this time around they actually kept their word. September 25th at 1600 hours, the loss of signal issues were finally resolved. However, before we could shoot confetti and fireworks, the loss of signal issue was not there but my account was not yet activated which meant that I still could not access the internet.

September 26th, one month after the application process started, JTL finally activated my account.

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I Waited and It Wasn’t That Great