MTN sale trick

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I have an old Nokia 2700 classic with my business SIM-card in it. (this way I can more easily stick to business hours while still being reachable on my private phone.)
This Nokia I only use for making and receiving calls, yet for 3 days in a row I receive the following SMS from MTN:

"Alert! Yesterday you used R1 on 1MB at Standard Data Rates! Buy a daily 20MB Bundle for only R4 by dialing *141*2*13311# now and SAVE BIG! TsCs."

Apart from the fact that I didn't load any data bundles on this number and I haven't used it for data, it would be very strange to be using R1 on 1MB 3 days in a row. But what concerns me most is that this is a straight lie to try and get me to buy data.

Apart from it being allowed, but is it normal for companies to lie to customers to get them to purchase more? Or is this just MTN? Do any of you have similar experience with MTN or any other telecom provider?
 
They have just realized they lost 23 million to a dodgy ex emplyee they "trusted" and now owe Ruwanda 112 million. They gotta get it back from their customers somehow...
 
From what I know of billing system related to cell industries... It's not unusual for the company to "pre-book" airtime on a call you are making. i.e. initially charge 60s billing for a 51s call and credit you with 9s call time a short time later.

Because Data and voice charges are interchangeable these days, you're probably tripping a "data" usage alert because of this pre-booking mechanism when using airtime for a voice call.

Rather than think conspiracy theories, maybe it's just an overeager alerting system ;)
 
Vodacom does the same. My mother in law uses her phone for WhatsApp, and that's it. Vodacom keeps calling her to offer her a monthly R400 data bundle of 5GB because she "uses it all in days".
 
DMNknight said:
Rather than think conspiracy theories, maybe it's just an overeager alerting system ;)
Click to expand...

The weird thing is that I get this message every day even on Monday, while my phone has been switched off all Sunday.
But maybe you're right, maybe a system has gone hyper.

However it has been going on for over a week now that have decided to port the number to another provider. Because it's very annoying.
 
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