SMS problems explained
Virgin Mobile today confirmed problems with its SMS service, saying that it “experienced technical problems with outgoing SMSs this week for certain customers”.
“Certain customers were incorrectly charged for the SMS messages that should have been free. These were customers on packages that include free SMS and the free SMSs were incorrectly expired,” said Virgin Mobile spokesperson Christelle Hicklin.
“The problem was specific to approximately 20 000 Classic Phone Contract and TopUp Package customers who had free or bonus SMS’s included in their packages” said Hicklin.
According to Virgin Mobile the fault was unexpected and can be traced to a configuration error which appeared after the company had migrated to the Huawei IN platform.
“At the end of October, Virgin Mobile migrated all of its customers to the new Huawei IN platform implemented by Cell C. The migration was completed successfully, with very few customer-affecting issues. However, one of the features available on the platform, the automatic expiry of free/bonus SMS messages was incorrectly configured for the set of customers mentioned above during the migration process” commented Hicklin, adding that “earlier this week, this incorrect configuration led to certain customers’ free SMS validity period expiring prematurely”
The matter has since been corrected and the configuration for all affected customers has been rectified says Virgin Mobile.
“We are in the process of re-instating the expired SMS’s for all affected customers and as the majority of customers have already been credited with their missing SMS’s, we expect this process to be concluded today. In addition, customers who were charged for messages sent AFTER their free SMSs were expired incorrectly will also be credited during the course of the next couple of days for these incorrect charges.”
Virgin Mobile SMS problems – comments and views
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