Please I need your reaction to this matter…Yesterday night(181212) I was doing a top-up credit of 1,500(One Thousand Five Hundred) through QuickTeller to my phone number 08033620843. I mistakenly sent the credit to a telephone number: 08033630843. I called MTN Customer Service immediately and they confirmed that the credit was on the said phone. They advised me to call the subscriber to whom I mistakenly sent the credit and appeal to him/her resend it to my phone. I followed their advice and sent a text to subscriber 08033630843. He/she did not respond.

I later called the subscriber and he/she would not pick up my calls. I later called MTN Customer service and their logic was very interesting: according to them, there was nothing they could do. I should consider the transaction a loss in the face of overwhelming evidence. When I asked why, they said the subscriber did not steal credit from me that I was the one who sent it to him/her. I asked them that does it means that anybody, who takes advantage of a person’s negligence to steal from him, will be exonerated. I told them that there was a time MTN mistakenly credited their subscribers with credit, why did they recall the credit from the subscribers to whom it was sent. Why did they not consider it a loss and allow the subscribers to continue to use it.

This is my case: I agree I made a mistake. I submit that human error is inevitable in transactions. I believe an effective system must have a back-up plan to manage human errors. The issue is very clear in my mind but unfortunately, it is not clear to MTN Customer service. Would a bank tell you there is nothing they can do if you mistakenly credited a customer with money not meant for him/her? Would my neighbour be free to sit on my parcel sent to me from my brother abroad, if I found out that the parcel was mistakenly sent him? Will the police tell me that there is nothing they can do because I gave my brother a wrong address? Does one become a lesser suspect because he did not initiate the process of a crime? Does it matter that I did not have the intention of transferring credit to subscriber 08033620843 and the subscriber knows that very well?

This is my demand from MTN: that this matter should be thoroughly investigated and the facts established by MTN .Also, MTN should ensure that justice is done, having established the facts.

It is a bad precedent that QuickTeller and MTN system do not have human-error back-up for a system that is prone to human error. I believe that this kind of thing can only happen in Black Africa in the region of the Third World, where anything goes unchallenged. For me it is not about the money. It is about an unfriendly system that exposes the insensitivity of service providers to the hopes, yearnings and aspirations of their customers. What if this had happened to a student who transferred credit with the last kobo in his/her account through QuickTeller,  would this have been how he was going to be told to bury his/her own dead?

I need your thoughts. I want to be sure I am not out of my mind and if I am I beg to be told.