Tawanda Mashava

All things, without fear, and informational

Wednesday 5 September 2018

EcoCash Clandestinely Increase Charges by 200%

Econet's Mobile Money platform, Ecocash has clandestinely increased its charges by a massive 200%, and this was done clandestinely as evidence on the ground shows no-one knew of the increase.

The 200% is a figure for the Balance Inquiry, which is mainly free with the other mobile money facilities like Telecel's Telecash and NetOne's One Money. Balance Inquiry has always been charged at 2 cents (US$0.02) by the cash chowing Ecocash, and now it is being charged at 6 cents, a massive 200% increase for a service that has very little, if any, direct costs for the service provider, Econet.

I asked 7 of my workmates here if they received an SMS or other communication from Ecocash of the intended increase prior to its being effected, and none has received any such information, and interestingly, 4 of these did not even know that they were always charged for Balance Inquiry.

When Transacting, one will be charged the 6 cents on their wallet balance, whilst the information  hidden in the columns on their website wrongly claims you will be charged only 3 cents, as indicated in the screen capture below from their website.
Ecocash Website Wrongly indicates you will be charged 3 cents (As at 1544Hrs 05 Sept 2018), wheres the actual charge is 6 cents

What Econet has done is unfair on its clients, and I want to believe should also be illegal, but I am no legal brains. Ecocash is the country's most popular Mobile Money platform, if not payment platform for anything, and is also the most expensive of all the Mobile Money platforms from the three Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). They even charge for services that other operators provide for free services like sending money to other registered users of the platform, with TeleCash, for example, sending money is free, you are only charged for purchases and cash-outs, as these involve 3rd parties that need to get some commission.

Their website also claims that "Transactions for less than $1 are FREE" but they charge for balance inquiry as if it were a transaction above the dollar threshold.

6 comments:

  1. Your analysis lacks 1 thing, actual analysis! If you say it’s most popular where are your transaction volume figures to back this up or at least borrow some stats from the POTRaz sector report to show number of subs or market share, them we will start listening. Otherwise these emotionally backed commetaries won’t do much fro blog champ.

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    1. Thank you Mr. Anonymous, unfortunately this particular post was not meant to be a stats based post, but an emotional outburst at the way we have been treated by the Mobile giant (Hopefully I don't need figures again to call it a mobile giant), so yes, it is an EMOTIONAL commentary

      But again, who doesn't know that EcoCash is the most popular mobile money platform in Zimbabwe?

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    2. With all due respect, I don't think you live in Zimbabwe if you don't know that Econet is the most popular money platform in Zimbabwe.

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    3. Thank you Simbarashe, you dont need data from POTRAZ to say what everyone knows, its like looking for data solidify your claim that Trump is the US president

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  2. ecocash please hamunawo tisti here nevanhu vari kutambura sure. u are busy stealing from the poor . how many clients do u have. if we multiply by 6 cents surely thats a lot of money per. why charge us for checking our balance. God is watching.

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    Replies
    1. Thats (Econet) Business for you, dog eat dog world!

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