[kictanet] The Safaricom money machine

Wed Sep 15 13:39:54 EAT 2010

>From a telco perspective, any traffic on the network has a cost to it. An
undelivered text message costs the telco some resources. These businesses
are not social enterprises, they exist to provide profitable returns to
shareholders (in addition to the other social conscious promises they make).
If the cost will be covered by someone, I don't think you can convince them
they should bear it.

If all Safaricom is doing, as Barack said, is exploiting the ignorance of
subscribers, wouldn't that be easily remedied by a continuous 'civic
education' campaign? Would we then, knowing what charges would be levied and
why, still require the telco to cover the cost of user errors on their
network? If the citizens find an operator to be exploitative, they would
simply jump ship to a competitor as long as CCK creates an environment for
subscribers to easily change operators without being punished for it.

Some of the charges are irritating but asking telcos to cover the costs of
my butter fingers maybe a bit unrealistic.

Kind regards,

*Muchiri* Nyaggah

Director

@muchiri

+254 722 506400

Semacraft.com

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Andrea Bohnstedt <
andrea.bohnstedt at ratio-magazine.com> wrote:

> I'm not really sure what your point is. If I intend to give cash to Otieno,
> and instead send it to Amondi, that's not the mobile money operator's fault.
> It's my own fault. The M-PESA menu instructs you to enter the recipient's
> phone number. What more clarity to you need? (and yes, I think it'd be
> useful to be able to enter phone numbers straight from my directory on my
> phone).
>
> By providing an avenue to obtain a reversal of wrongly sent money, the
> operator has met its obligations. This is not 'cashing in on ignorance'.
>
> On 15 September 2010 12:44, Barrack Otieno <otieno.barrack at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> In other words they are not non-issues Andrea, to learn you must risk
>> looking silly which is what we are trying here, so when a telco cashes on
>> the citizens ignorance who defends them? that is impunity!
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 12:07 PM, Andrea Bohnstedt <
>> andrea.bohnstedt at ratio-magazine.com> wrote:
>>
>>>  Both non-issues, I think:
>>>
>>> For whatever evils you want to blame on Safaricom (global warming? end of
>>> civilisation as we know it? feminism?), you can't really blame them for your
>>> own inability to enter the phone number of the intended recipient correctly.
>>> And I say this as someone who has broken up larger M-PESA payments in two
>>> amounts because I was too freaked out that I'd accidentally send the money
>>> to the wrong person.
>>>
>>> And deactivated lines: If you want to deactivate your Safcom line, take
>>> the money out of your MPESA. Easy. It won't get disconnected by CCK for
>>> failure to register it because the registration process for M-PESA doubles
>>> up as your SIM card registration. If CCK disconnects your line because
>>> you've been found to demand ransom M-PESA payments for abducting kids, you
>>> have other problems.
>>>
>>> On 15 September 2010 10:41, robert yawe <robertyawe at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I have noted that when you send money from mpesa to the wrong number and
>>>> you request for the transaction to be reversed you do not recover the
>>>> transaction costs.
>>>>
>>>> When a line with credit is deactivated what happens to the credit?  With
>>>> the banks a new policy requires that funds from inactive accounts need to be
>>>> remitted to Central Bank.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Robert Yawe
>>>> KAY System Technologies Ltd
>>>> Phoenix House, 6th Floor
>>>> P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200
>>>> Kenya
>>>>
>>>> Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Andrea Bohnstedt
>>> Publisher
>>> +254 720 960 322
>>> www.ratio-magazine.com
>>>
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>>> This message was sent to: otieno.barrack at gmail.com
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>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Barrack O. Otieno
>> +41767892272
>> Skype: barrack.otieno
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Andrea Bohnstedt
> Publisher
> +254 720 960 322
> www.ratio-magazine.com
>
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