Du's backdown is a consumer victory

Even for UAE residents inured to less-than-stellar standards of customer service, du's response to a complaint about its sudden price rise this week was remarkable.

To a gripe on Twitter by a disgruntled Du customer, someone at the telecoms company's official Twitter account replied: "Hey! If you don't want to continue with the services, you can cancel your account at one of our stores."

The tweet has since been deleted and the company has apologised for it and, as The National reported yesterday, du has even partially backed down on the 38 per cent price increase for its most basic internet and phone package.

But the episode went viral because it went beyond just anger at a seemingly unwarranted price rise. The ham-fisted response encapsulated many people's experiences with customer service in an environment where there is a paucity of competition.

However there are also positives to be taken from this unfortunate episode. This scenario is exactly why du was set up to compete with Etisalat, which had previously enjoyed a monopoly - and with all the customer service implications that come with an absence of choice.

A duopoly still might not be ideal, but having a choice does give consumers a degree of power to vote with their feet - or, in this case, with their laptops and smartphones.

And despite the astonishingly wrong-headed tweet that put the antisocial into social media, du realised it was in the midst of scoring a spectacular own goal, and added a little more consumer choice to the original price increase, by offering an opt-out period.

It would be nice to think that this was because du realised it was wrong but the more likely explanation is that the company understood that it could not take its customers for granted. That is a clear step forward.

And although we are still a long way from having customer service of a kind that befits a nation with the UAE's development level and economic standing, this shows the situation is heading in the right direction.

That was certainly the sentiment in the Twitterverse, where users who rallied around the hashtag #dupricerise to voice their anger were celebrating a victory for average consumers. Or, as one tweet put it: "#Consumer #win."