MTN Nigeria: Why should a big brand be in the habit of constantly stealing from its own customers?

By Ikem Okuhu

I have endured the stealing of my call units by MTN to the point that I just have to vent. If it would take getting through to the Nigerian Communications Commission to put a stop to this, I am ready. It is not only about the money, as a friend asked me while I was making a post on Facebook about this, but it is the sheer impunity with which they perpetrate this.

This thing has happened far too many times for me to continue to ignore. Before I conclude this complaint, I will have to recall an incident that happened in 2008, and it was still the same MTN that raided my line and took a total of N10,000 and tried to blame me for it until I proved otherwise

The vast VAS dragnet.

MTN has a number of registered value-added services agents working with them. These operators run value-added services like caller-ringback tunes, some forms of lotteries, and educational services. These people, I am told operate on, sometimes difficult to achieve targets. When achieving those targets becomes impossible, they resort to all manner of underhanded tactics to meet these targets.

The only way to get this done is to nick money from the recharge values of MTN customers. They will send an SMS alert informing you that you have subscribed to one of those things they do: either call tune, lotto, music download, or any other thing on their table, and that a given amount has been removed from your account for the service. If you do not opt out immediately, you are locked in a cycle in which a given amount is deducted from your phone every week, depending on the cycle of whatever they dragged you into.

In the particular incident that triggered this, I was driving home at about 8.00 PM when an alert on my phone drew my attention. On checking, I found that the message was from MTNN, with the heading of one Edu-Digi Mathematics Exclusive, proclaiming that N200 had just been deducted from my phone for my subscription to the service. The message read:

“Dear Customer, you have successfully subscribed to Edu-Digi Mathematics Exclusive and N200 has been deducted from your account.  Your service will be renewed on 03/09/2026 10:56. Enjoy My Baby by Talo.Dial 4101815# ,Get 2 tunez and select auto renewal to win N1k airtime. Dial 410# for more CallerTunez,T&C Apply. To cancel your active services, dial 305#.”

If MTN was not stealing, how could they be telling me that a subscription I was never in had been renewed? I was never in the service anyway. I am not studying for a WASC exam on mathematics. Ever since my first child was a curious, restless baby, I had intentionally coached him and his siblings to not pay attention to my phone. They can play all they want with their mum’s device, but my phone is off-limits for them.

I am saying this because those who commented on my Facebook post about this were trying to blame me for inadvertently subscribing, or any of my children using the phone to do the same. This didn’t happen.

I have suffered a lot in the hands of MTN, and the only fault of mine that I can trace is just being a customer. Some months ago, I needed a Broadband service at home. I reasoned that it was better for me and my family to have the device. Somehow, a cousin of mine saw an MTN agent installing those things around our neighbourhood and got me both the flyer and the chap’s phone number.

I called the man and, in a few days, the service was installed. But the service stopped after the first month and then went on a hiatus. I could no longer recharge. A staff member pointed to an alternative, which was to load N30,000 to my phone and then transfer from there to the broadband. I dutifully put N30,000 credit on my phone, and the transfer stalled, and I spent the money recharging my Data until I burnt the whole thing in less than 2 weeks.

I stayed away from the broadband router for some months before I discovered I could drive to a service centre to have it recharged.

MTN is doing these things intentionally. They realise that because of the strong equity associated with phone lines and associated services, loyalty is based on ownership, and once you are in, you are stuck. I could have opted for another broadband service provider, but how many of these things can you have in one home at once?

Flashback to the robbery of 2008

Since it is the season of lamentations, I must recall what I went through in the hands of MTN in 2006 or thereabouts. I was then working in the Corporate Communications division of the United Bank for Africa. Because back then phones were not this vastly developed and there was no WhatsApp, we did many things via the SMS channel.

You cannot use the absence of airtime in your phone as an excuse for any work to be left undone, so, many of us changed our lines to contract lines. My own line back then was contracted to a N10,000 monthly recharge, and once you run out of money on the phone, you can only recharge with the N1,500 recharge cards and multiples of it.

In this particular month, I had just paid N10,000 for my monthly recharge, and a few hours later, I tried to make a call, and MTN was telling me I had no airtime and that I was actually owing them (we were allowed some credit calls on that contract line).

I was shocked and went to their service centre on Saka Tinubu, but got insulted by the staff. I returned to the office and called my friend, the late Tumise Adekunle, who manned the Brands & Marketing desk at This Day back then. Tumise asked that I put my experience in writing, and I did that immediately.

The article made a full-page report in This Day back then, and immediately, MTN senior employees began to call. They then realised that I was not an imposter. This was because in the article, I exposed how the same amount of money was deducted as call costs from me for more than 1,000 consecutive calls. I think the exact cost was N2,29kobo or something not too far from this.

I challenged them that it was not humanly possible to spend exactly the sme time on calls more than 1,000 times. A letter acknowledging their wrongdoing, a diary, and four branded mugs later, and we were back in our romance, as I forgave their sins.

This VAS services fraud has returned to reopen the wounds. No customer deserves such robbery. And MTN cannot blame this on their VAS operators alone. The company itself is complicit. I say this because it is from the same MTNN through which they send me most reminders that these fraudulent practices are communicated.

For instance, this evening, MTN sent me a reminder that my broadband service expires on September 9 through this same MTNN channel.

As my people would say, “whatever the molars are chewing, the ears hear the sound.” We know you guys are robbing us. Just try to do it a lot more gently