Yesterday, someone topped up my number with a small amount of credit (pay-as-you-go), and activated unlimited monthly mobile data package.
I still have a data plan (prepaid data, postpaid calls and texts) on my main SIM expiring in a week.
I haven’t used any of it (on secondary, of course), and contacted my carrier’s tech support stating these appeared unexpectedly. Their response was “We would like to inform you that the credit on your phone number was topped up at a point of sale. The unlimited package was later activated at the same point of sale.”
And? Was the tech support person just trying to imply it was likely paid for in cash and I just shouldn’t care because they couldn’t refund it anyway?
Anyway, one annoying thing about this is that it also activated automatic renewal, so if I wasn’t using the number for a few months, I wouldn’t notice my remaining credit automatically draining.
Hell, if I had registered for their online account, it would even possibly pay that directly from my debit card on renewal.
I disabled auto renewal, but that’s all I can do. It was paid for by that stranger for the next month.
Mate, you should keep auto-renewal on, and go to the media to rat out your provider for knowingly letting you use another customer’s payment method. That’s one of those consumer segments that makes suburbanites mad.
Yup, that’s the best possible outcome. In the unlikely event the transaction gets reversed, the company has a record of your call and could, possibly, eat the bill instead of sticking you with it.
I wonder if it would make the company more money in the long run for people to forget to turn off unlimited and auto renew than it would cost the company to “oopsie! Someone must have paid for this!” And pay for it the first time in secret as a marketing expense.
Barely costs them anything, I’d bet they’re full of shit with the “activated at point of sale” line. We’re at a stage of capitalism where legitimate companies are behaving like scammers.