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Safaricom customers to be refunded any erroneous billing by ‘Cheza Games’


Safaricom says all its customers who have been subscribed to premium rate subscription services without their knowledge will be fully refunded any money billed.

Chief executive officer Bob Collymore said the refunds would be done by the culpable ‘Cheza Games’, which are run by various content service providers (CSPs) that are licensed by the Communications Authority (CA).

“I have committed that all customers who have been erroneously subscribed to the ‘Cheza Games’ service shall be refunded by the providers of the ‘Cheza Games’ service for the amounts erroneously billed,” he said.

PROTECTING CUSTOMERS

“We shall continue conducting investigations of all premium service providers to ensure that our customer are protected and not exposed to such malpractices.”

The statement comes after a number of customers complained that they were losing airtime in an unexplained manner.

Mr Collymore also said Safaricom has employed a system on its network that automatically updates the customer if they have signed up for any premium rate services and asks them to reconfirm the subscription.

A customer can also manage their subscriptions by dialing *100*5# on pre-paid plan or *200*5# for those on post-paid.

BLAME

The telco further laid blame on CA, which licenses the premium rate services providers.

“…all mobile service providers are obligated to work with CSPs. We remain concerned that some service providers who are supposed to ensure that their services have a simple opt in and opt out option have not done so, despite continued operator and customer complaints,” said Mr Collymore.

“We will be grateful if the CA exercised its regulatory oversight by constantly reviewing the operations of the CSPs and even deregistered the ones found to be defrauding customers or operating in contravention of their licence.”

COURTESY
COURTESY