Econet’s doublespeak on EcoCash auto-signups. Tweets betray true position

L.S.M Kabweza Avatar

ecocash-admissionWhen we contacted Econet yesterday about the auto-registration to EcoCash, they basically said that their policy is to not do such stuff. “It is not our policy to automatically register customers, as they are always given the choice to register, as well as opt out of the service.” they said. That sounded so unbelievable ofcourse.

Today, in an about turn that’s quite interesting, the company official Twitter account today confirmed the auto-registrations as somewhat new ‘policy’ intended to remove the need for voice customers to physically visit an agent. The tweet was in response to a customer that was querying an auto registration:

Then, they are asked why this was done without the prior knowledge of the customer.

Why Econet is denying and the saying yes at the same time, we have no idea. It could be whoever is manning the Twitter account hasn’t received the official “we’re saying No to initiative” communication, or that they have indeed found that they can get away with this legally.

A source at the company told us yesterday that the regulator, the Reserve Bank, had queried the auto-registrations and that as a company they had explained it as a technical glitch. This tweet certainly means it was no glitch. or maybe our source was wrong. Or maybe the organisation is just so big now, the left hand has no idea what right hand is up to.

What we can confirm however so far is that the EcoCash auto-registrations started at the weekend and that some people were still receiving them on Tuesday.

4 comments

  1. joo

    Lets throw wild speculation out there and presume it wasn’t a mistake, but they intentionally signed everyone up, then may do something like apologise by putting $1 into everyone they registered account. This may motivate a lot of people who previously never used EcoCash to give it a try…. those that don’t it doesn’t matter econet still have their dollar.
    Pure conspiracy theory… but you never know….
    Also lets remember this when at their next press conference they say 6 million people have signed up to EcoCash!

  2. Obnub

    I think it was a ‘fairly’ good thing – it gives the motivation perhaps to people to give it a try. Just a pity their communication is so bad! Pity too that there isn’t A LOT more one can pay for using Eco cash.

  3. ecochii?

    I received two text messages from Econet yesterday. The first was a confirmation that the line was registered for Ecocash with name and ID number (used to register the Sim at Econet), the second one had a temporary Ecocash pin number. This line is not used for voice calls, we only use it in an electronic monitoring device. We did not register the line for Ecocash. I am convinced Econet is automatically registering subscribers.

  4. flyby

    despite having explained to econet(who ever was tasked to call lines unregistered to ecocash) why i did not and never will register they went ahead and registered me without my consent,can someone pliz explain before i contact the competition and tariffs comm.

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