Kenya's biggest telco company Safaricom experienced a technical hitch on Wednesday morning that saw its subscribers purchase data bundles worth millions for free. It is not yet clear as to what exactly led to the problem which will without a doubt leave the company at a loss.
There was nothing unusual with the process of purchasing the data bundles except for the fact that one was there was no charges imposed on the subscribers for the data bundles. One would simply dial *544# as usual then proceed to purchase the bundles. The amount of money to be spend on the bundles ranged up to one million with some of the users repeating the process multiple times
A number of Kenyan social media users alerted the company through its Twitter handle.
According to the tweets and replies on Safaricom's Twitter handle, they were aware of the problem but did not disclose more details about it.
"Hi Melisa, we are aware of the issue and resolution is underway. Kindly be patient as we address. Apologies.^CS," one of the replies from Safaricom read.
This is however not the first time that Safaricom is experiencing a technical hitch, in June, the company lost millions after the Safaricom Platinum service experienced a problem that saw Kenyans buy any amount of data using bonga points.
The problem has also emerged at a time when a lawyer has moved to court in a bid to block service providers including Safaricom from depriving their subscribers of expired bundles.
Here are some of the screenshots of Safaricom's replies to its customers who had alerted them of the problem.