OPEN LETTER: Customer Elaborates How Safaricom Is Robbing Customer’s Airtime

As per our discussion, below is a story to confirm what I told you.

Some time in September, a friend of mine complained to me that she had loaded her phone with 100 bob of airtime but after two short calls, her airtime was gone. I advised her to dial 100 for prepaid customer care but these guys never pick. Since I’m on post paid, I decided to call 200, which is easily picked because we make for less than 1% of Safaricom customer base. She explained her problem and she was notified that she had subscribed to a games service called “Cheza Games” and that she was being charged for playing games. To which she notified them that to the best of her knowledge, she never made any subscriptions, nor has she ever played any games on her phone. They responded that she may have accidentally subscribed to the games. she had been deducted a whole 72 shillings in one short morning, 72% of airtime stolen! This prompted me to check my account and to my utter shock, I had subscribed to the same service and I had been billed a total of 1500 shillings in four months! When I enquired to know how, they gave me the same explanation of accidental subscription, at which point I demanded for a refund.

To find out whether you have subscribed to some services unknowingly, for prepaid, dial *100*5*4# and for post paid, dial *200*5*4#. Choose option “2” which is “unsubscribe”. If you haven’t subscribed to anything, you will see “no records found”. If you have, there will be a list of them. These services are offered by a category of companies calling themselves Premium Service Providers. Try sharing this with your friends and you will see the extent to which this fraud is being perpetrated. If there are any people who will find that they have subscribed, chances are that they have no clue how they got subscribed in the first place. Only a very small number of people actually know this because Safaricom is not willing to educate her clients on this because it will amount to loss of revenue.

In my quest to find out from Safaricom how they are letting these things happen, they actually admitted that there are some employees who have been colluding with these service providers by subscribing people via the back end without the knowledge of subscribers. Some employees actually own these service providers and many have been sacked having amassed hundreds of millions or even billions among them since these fraudulent activities have been occurring for many years now. I have written to Bob Collymore demanding that this should be put to an end by sensitizing Safaricom customers but to no avail. I shall forward to you my correspondence to him in a separate email. I demanded to get the contacts of the Cheza games and was informed that it is “Huawei Technologies”. I called them to inquire what I was being charged for and they told me that I was subscribed and even thought I don’t play, there is a flat fee of 10 shillings per day. However, in my billing. the first month was ksh.15, then 114, then 357, then 401, then 492. When I asked how come it escalated beyond the ksh.300 that is chargeable per month, given a flat fee of 10 bob per day, the guy couldn’t answer my question. Whenever Safaricom is faced with these complaints, they are quick to refund you because after all, only a few people know this. By refunding you, they pacify you hence buying your silence.

Caption: Safaricom CEO Robert Bob Collymore.The Buck stops with him!