Let’s start with one of the companies that’s drummed up some controversy on our site

Liquid Home has had quite a year in 2023, balancing growth in areas like it’s LTE packages, fighting the inflation and ZWL/USD balance like every other company, and of course operating with a “business as usual” approach in a year that had elections abd a few surprises in the internet provider space, namely, people discovering Starlink. And on the surface, one could say Liquid has done a pretty bang-up job as a company this year. That is until you look at some of their weird account handling issues, the LTE Black market fiasco and a bunch of service outages that are becoming a little too common make the former ZOL not require as much caps in its feathers.

Let’s start with what Liquid has been nailing this year. Right at the top is still their LTE lines, which have been a great way to spread into areas where the traditional Fibre infrastructure isn’t there as well as customers that usually would’ve never stepped foot in a ZOL/Liquid office. It’s basically the kind of expansion and easier access we expect from all our internet providers, and in many ways Liquid and contemporaries like TelOne have done pretty well in this area. Except… They could do a lot better. In case you don’t know, both Liquid Home and TelOne have lines that are being sold on the black market due to the companies themselves saying they have reached capacity for the lines in  major series and now, certain small towns.

However these lines are clearly out in the wild being sold at marked up prices by everyone from certain liquid agents to your typical phone dealer on Facebook. And what makes this all worse is Liquid doesn’t seem to be publicly acknowledging and dealing with the issue (we’ve reached out to them , but have not yet received any formal reply). Whether this is because some employees in Liquid itself are benefitting from this arrangement , or the company is just somehow oblivious to all these machinations remains to be seen. However, whatever reason is the cause for this, it’s causing problems for both prospective customers and even existing customers, which isn’t good for Liquid’s image either.

On that same note of accessibility , Liquid’s Speed bundle promotion (and other associated promos) are the type of blessings we only receive once in a while and honestly, they have been a lifesaver for me. Along with the healthy offering of other usual promotions for night , rollover and sometimes weekend data. Liquid has always been pretty good at finding ways to keep its users happy whether they are premium unlimited top tier customers or the guy hanging on a dongle line recharging airtime when his wallet can take it. We can’t downplay the importance these promo bundles have for most people. And we’re glad Liquid keeps finding new promos. Now if only we could have a lot less service outages , because seriously it’s becoming a nightmare. Just last week one in Harare put a few people out of business for over 6 hours. It’s not a good look. And to be fair, here it might not completely be Liquid’s fault as ZESA can be a factor. However if I’m the teacher grading Liquid’s paper (which in this case I am) , I think I’m allowed to say that while I cut the company some slack, I’m not giving a passing grade where a fail is still a fail. And in this case, the outages are a fail.

As for customer service and support? Well in a country where many could argue customer service is an afterthought or even a myth for most companies, Liquid still tends to be one of the better example. Don’t get me wrong there’s still tons to complain about and critique in their customer service, but admittedly they tend to do more right than wrong in our experience. That however doesn’t excuse that in their obvious need to channel more USD customers, they’re definitely making a few decisions that inconvenience users to keep USD flowing. And we don’t mean the promotions that favor USD customers, we mean the fact that an account is classified as either a ZWL and USD one and you have to always call Liquid or email them if you want to pay in a different currency month after month. It frankly just sucks, and Liquid needs to do better here. After all there’s borderline no real reason to keep switching a user’s account when literally sister company Econet has users able to use both. Do better guys, just let us pay with what we have when we have it and don’t make a whole scene out of it. After all that kind anti-consumer behavior is just a clear sign of a company abusing its monopoly, as it knows most users won’t bother switching or can’t easily switch. And considering POTRAZ  or our minister don’t really want to change how these companies nickel and dime us at their heart’s content, we’ll just have to keep nagging them ourselves until they move at least an inch.

But essentially, that’s ZOL/Liquid Home this past year: for every good step forward, there’s a step back. Every bit of good service has a nasty financial catch ,their service can be pretty good but the black market issue makes buying their lines seem like even more of a confusing struggle and every once in a while they kind of just don’t work. There’s potential to be right at the top here, and Liquid probably thinks they are at the top of their game. But everything from corporate greed to bad customer practices is making them miss a goal that’s right in front of them. Maybe this report card makes them think differently. Maybe not, but either way, you missed the mark quite a bit this year Liquid.

Grade: B-

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