Safaricom Users Raise Alarm Over Automatic Airtime Purchases as Company Responds
Safaricom are facing a growing bunch of complaints from worried users whove suddenly found their phone is doing some pretty weird stuff – like sending round multiple account balance notifications and somehow ‘accidentally’ buying and borrowing airtime without them having a clue what’s going on.
This all broke out after one customer Simon Maina made a public stink about being deluged with messages on his phone – which prompted a pretty hasty apology from Safaricom, who said theyd got the ball rolling to sort the problem out, but not a single word about what was actually behind all the unexpected activity.
Safaricom Responds to Customer Complaint
Maina posted on Facebook about how his phone had suddenly been bombarding him with account balance messages. He said it all started on a Saturday before but the messages just kept coming, so many that they were just rolling in one after another.
Simon basically just asked Safaricom, over on Facebook, why on earth his phone was just getting on with sending him all these balance messages & somehow taking it upon itself to buy him credit & minutes. I mean, at one point his phone was getting messages as fast as it could & it had done the same thing the Saturday before he posted this.
His post raised a heap of questions about why other people might find their accounts doing all sorts of odd things – especially if (like him) their phone was automatically ‘buying’ them airtime & minutes.
And Safaricom basically just said sorry for the bother and said they were onto it – but that was pretty much it in terms of explanation. They just stopped short of saying what was actually behind the problem.
Right now anyone who’s having a similar problem should just check up on their transactions and get in touch with Safaricom through the proper channels – as its entirely possible this is just a weird glitch that they can sort out in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.
Safaricom Shares Possible Fix for Missing M-PESA Messages
Separately, Safaricom has given some advice to customers who are having trouble getting M-PESA messages and balance updates. Apparently a customer had issues in August – they weren’t getting the usual M-PESA messages and they were worried.
Safaricom told this customer to check if their phone has been blocking M-PESA messages or if they’ve somehow ended up on some sort of block list.
The company said to check out the settings on your messaging app. Specifically, go to your messages and then find the “screened or blocked messages” setting. Also, if you’re one of the people who uses Truecaller or some other third-party app to manage your messages then you need to check if M-PESA messages are being blocked there as well.
This might actually be the problem causing the missing messages – some phones have settings that let you filter out messages if they think they’re spam. Customers who are still having trouble should give Safaricom a call and they’ll do some more troubleshooting on your behalf.
What to Do If Safaricom Is Borrowing Airtime Automatically
If you’re seeing some weird airtime borrowing going on without you asking for it, the first thing to do is not just assume that Safaricom has done something wrong. Sometimes there’s a simple explanation for this sort of thing.
Here are some things to try and see if you can figure out what’s going on:
- Check your transaction history: Go through your text messages and look at your account statements for any suspicious transactions that you can’t explain
- Have a look at your active subscriptions: Are you paying for any bundles or services that might be causing airtime to be deducted without you knowing
- Check your phone settings: Have a look at your messaging filters and any third-party apps that you use to manage your notifications, because they might be blocking the messages you get from Safaricom
- Call Safaricom: If you’re still baffled then get in touch with Safaricom and they should be able to look into this for you
- Keep a record of everything: Save your text messages and account statements and bring them along when you talk to Safaricom – it’ll make it easier for them to sort out the problem
Safaricom didn’t actually manage to figure out what was going on in the case mentioned. So in the end you have to go to them and get them to sort it out for you.
How M-PESA Ziidi MMF Auto Invest Works
In other news, Safaricom has a thing on M-PESA called Auto Invest which is connected to the Ziidi Money Market Fund. It lets eligible customers automate their savings by investing a percentage of their transactions into the fund.
Like I said Auto Invest lets you set up a rule that automatically puts a bit of your money into the fund whenever you make a qualifying transaction.
It’s a pretty different beast from the spurious airtime borrowing thing we were talking about earlier – Auto Invest is something you’ve actually set up yourself and it’s working according to the rules that you’ve set.
So if you’re one of the people using Auto Invest it’s worth having a look at the settings and your transaction history to make sure you understand how things are working.
And if you’re seeing any unexpected airtime activity just don’t assume it’s connected to Auto Invest without actually looking into it first.
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Safaricom Users Raise Alarm Over Automatic Airtime Purchases as Company Responds
