Telecom Swindle-Value Added Service-Questioned Service Ethics
Winter morning starts with dissatisfaction of Mr. Sazzad, not because of the weather is too unfriendly, but he found his mobile balance (a prepaid connection which is being used from last 13 years) or credit has been vanished almost. Mr. Sazzad-an unmarried doctor, living in Mogbazar for last few years and he works in a reputed hospital in Dhaka city. Last few days, he found that he has been charged from his mobile balance unnoticed and that is increasing day by day. Although he is an educated an well aware of technical usage, he doesn’t know how his mobile balanced is decreasing day by day even though he is not making a single phone call in the whole day. In the Thursday evening after his busy day, he finally decided to figure out the reason why his money has been deduced each day. He found the helpline number of that particular mobile operator and call them immediately. A conversation of around 7 minute held between Mr. Sazzad & that customer representative. Some key points are written below:
Mr. Sazzad: Could you please tell me detail ledger of my last 15 days mobile credit?
Operator: Of course Sir. Should I tell specific costing or each and every details?
Mr. Sazzad: I prefer to get every detail charge from my connection (audaciously).
Operator: Sure Sir. I think you are so much angry on us.
Mr. Sazzad: I’m sorry Mr., not on you specially the operator who has been taking away my blood sweated money without any prior reason.
Operator: (Tried to empathized) Sir, We are so sorry for that. However, I found a number of VAS services are activated in your connection. For these reason you are being charged individually for every services. (8-9 VAS are activated in your mobile).
Mr. Sazzad: Hello Mr., I never activated any of the services in my mobile and I think I’m a conscious educated phone user. Then how these bullshit services has been activated?
Operator: Extremely sorry for that. But sometime you get some call from our IVR(interactive voice response) for allowing different kinds of service alert. If you receive and replied with particular instruction then that services activated and you are charged every month month.
Mr. Sazzad: What? What you said? I response and replied with button pressing to activated that service? I’m sorry. I know this is meaningless to become rude with you. But I understand this simple thing clearly and never activated any of them. Anyway, I am not going to argument with you because I know you are instructed with a set of rules. Just please stop all these services immediately.
Operator: Sorry sir, this is not possible from here, I am going to text a short code, you will just follow it and make it by yourself.
Mr. Sazzad: I understand, you can activate it but we need to deactivate, if we wish, because it is our money. Thanks for your service, send me the code immediately.
Now let me clear all those things shortly. In day time specially, telecom operator choose to call number of customer automatically in such a way that if that call is just received then a service will be activated. I repeat that most of the VAS call are send in this way. But when a call is propagated to a mobile user, he must be curious and highest probability of receiving it, then the service will be activated and operator will be benefited immediately.
This is directly corruption by telecom operator. They are taking away money from general user without their prior concern. They have designed their VAS services (IVR call) in such a way so that most of the user can be misleading and they can earn money without any costing. Most of the VAS services are very expensive and once they are on, they never stopped until the user have stopped it. In Bangladesh, there are around 7.5 crore mobile user, among them some are educated, illiterate, unconscious, poor, student, and many other types of temporary and permanent user. So now please think how much of money are lost by mobile user without any prior notice. This is directly unethical, illogical and directly cheating with customer’s. I don’t know if this particular writing is read by any of the leading telecom expert of any operator, I openly wish to ask them, Why are Bangladeshi telecom operator are doing such kind of fraud with all of us? Or if they are aware of it, then prove me wrong with a cup to tea in this winter.
Julfat Nayeem, 22 Dec-2019