Yesterday I wrote a post complaining about underhand and I dare say fraudulent length GLO in conjunction with a VAS company is going to increase their ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). Since then, a few things have happened
- The spam texts have become more desperate. Some of the recent texts i’ve received are “Gooday I met u, I am Rose, wht is ur name?”; “Can I be ur friend?”; “Pls reply me, I want us to chat, am Temi”; “Hello I am very sexy”. etc. I have received a few missed calls too.
- I have an idea of actual VAS company that is behind the ‘service’
- I have got a link that will enable me petition the NCC Executive Vice Chairman directly.
Why this is important.
Unlike Loy who says “rants don’t pay my bills. I’d rather focus on covering startups than waste my time debating telco fraud”, I think this is rather important
- Telcos occupy a rather extraordinarily powerful position in technology ecosystem they should be held to account for misdeeds tat affect a lot of people.
- This is directly related to 3rd party mobile services provided on their platform. If VAS services are abused and become generally known to be unsafe, it affects all of us. We are still trying to get people to start using digital payment methods.
- There is a debate about the role telcos should play in mobile money. If my small prepaid airtime is not safe with telcos, what is the risk of giving the same people access to all my money in the bank?
So I will do my best to follow this up. I am thinking writing to the EVC might be too harsh considering I have not made a complaint to GLO. So during run-around today, I will stop over at their head office to file a complaint formally. I will see how that goes before proceeding with my other options.