Telecoms subscribers groan over unsolicited SMS payment

Scores of subscribers who spoke with Daily Trust reporter in Lagos and Abuja expressed their grouse over the situation while calling on the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to urgently investigate the trend and punish any erring operator.But NCC said yesterday that it is not right for any operator to bill a subscriber for a service […]

Scores of subscribers who spoke with Daily Trust reporter in Lagos and Abuja expressed their grouse over the situation while calling on the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to urgently investigate the trend and punish any erring operator.
But NCC said yesterday that it is not right for any operator to bill a subscriber for a service not rendered to him.
A subscriber on MTN network, Mrs Jolaosho Basirat accused the telcos of deducting N50 per week from her credit air time for a service to notify her of events in Lagos which she never subscribed to.
She said she had sent ‘STOP’ to the code 38261 that sends her the message “and the information keeps coming to my line and my money is being deducted.”
Another subscriber, Pa Adedamola James also explained his plight of being charged for N50 every week by code 33070 from MTN for jobs alert.
Pa Ademola disclosed that when he first received the SMS, it was stated that his mobile number has been given free 7days trial for the service but he was surprised when he keeped on getting the message since then and he was being charged each he received the SMS.
Adamu Abdullah, an auto rickshaw driver in Abuja, could not also understand why his airtime credit account balance should be deducted for an SMS sent to him by his operator.
He said he loaded N100 airtime and he got a message confirmation and was told to get a certain ring-back tone for N50 per month by sending a certain musician name to a particular code.
“I ignored the message and did not send anything. But when I checked by account balance, they had deducted my N50”,  Abdullah said.
The subscribers said all the four major operators are guilty of sending unwanted messages to subscribers.
Fraudsters have also taken advantage of that by creating some codes and posing as operators to defraud consumers.
The President National Association of Telecoms Subscribers (NATCOMS), Mr Adeolu Ogunbanjo said these unsolicited SMS are way through which the operators are creating awareness on their products and services but said that some of them are misleading especially those ones on lotteries.
Ogunbanjo said: “The message will say the SMS will cost an amount and sometimes they won’t even state the cost and you must have been lured into it and by the time you want to quit, you won’t be able to get out. So unsolicited messages based on their beneficial promotions as it concerns creating awareness for subscriber is good but when it now comes to lotteries it is unsolicited.”
He said NATCOMS had resolved to file a court case against telecoms operators next week to request for compensation of N5000.00 airtime for every subscriber and establishment of consumer management complain procedures and resolution.
But telecoms operators denied that subscribers are being charged for unsolicited services.
An official of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) told Daily Trust “that subscribers are only charged for services they willingly subscribed to.”
The ALTON official, who is a senior staff of one the two biggest operators in the country, pleaded anonymity because “my response has not been endorsed by the members.”
He said there is no way subscribers would be charged for service not rendered because the industry regulator is monitoring their networks, including how they charge the subscribers.
The association has not received any complaint from their customers on this issue, he added.
An NCC spokesman said it is not possible for an operator to charge its subscribers for unsolicited message.
Reuben Mouka said subscribers are not supposed to pay for service not rendered to them.
But he said the operators could “charge for lotteries and it is lotteries that most subscribers are being charged for”.
“Many subscribers play lotteries and the operators bill them for it. If their account balance is being debited because they play lottery, we can’t say the operators have erred. But making the subscribers to pay for any service they don’t want is not right.”