I’ve got a Viva line and a friend called me last week and told me that when she called me Arabic music started playing. I never signed up to the ringback tone service so I called up Viva and told them what was happening and to turn it off. Fast forward to this morning and a friend calls me up and tells me the Quran started playing when he called me so he thought he had the wrong number. So I called up Viva up and told them to turn off the ringback tone again and also asked how it got activated in the first place? The call center guy told me Viva activated the Islamic ringback tone as part of their 10 year anniversary. So I got in touch with Viva on Twitter and this is what they had to say:
So basically, on their 10 year anniversary, they decided to activate a paid service on all their customers’ phone lines without informing them. On their 10 year anniversary as a gift to me, they activated a service I didn’t ask for without telling me. How much more unprofessional can you get?
Usually, I would have dropped them as a telecom provider instantly and moved my number to another one but I don’t think the other providers are any better.
I had a second number with Zain I wasn’t using but was keeping for nostalgic reasons. It was my first mobile phone number which I got back in 1995 when I was still in high school. Every month I would log in to the Zain website and settle my bill which was around 2KD. A few months ago I logged in and noticed on top of my usual monthly bill for my number, I had 500 fils to pay for a second number I hadn’t owned in five years.
When I was married, my wife’s number was under my name, then when I got a divorce 5 years ago, we shifted the number to her name. She spent over 3 years paying the bills and then around 2 years ago, she closed her line and moved out of the country for good. For some unknown reason, Zain decided to bill me 500 fils randomly out of the blue 5 years after the number stopped belonging to me and 2 years after my ex wife had closed it. I could easily have just paid it since it was just 500 fils, but it was more about the principle. I went to a Zain branch to figure out how this happened but they couldn’t figure it out so I just paid the 500 fils and closed my account with them and lost my high school number in the process.
I guess Ooredoo is the only telecom I haven’t tried but can’t imagine them being any better.
