Altech subsidiary Autopage Cellular has changed its systems so that clients will in future be billed correctly.
The cellular company inconvenienced about 5 000 clients when it ran its monthly debit orders at the end of October, with several irate customers complaining on consumer site hellopeter.com.
Altech Autopage Cellular is the largest independent mobile service provider in the country and offers contracts with MTN, Vodacom and Cell C.
Some customers were overcharged, while others were undercharged, explains marketing director Justin Hume. In addition, some clients, who had previously cancelled their Autopage contracts, were billed. “It was a priority to reverse those funds,” he says.
However, the glitch was picked up “almost immediately” and most of the faulty debits were retracted, says Hume.
While customers have been “brought back in line” with where they should be, Autopage was not able to contact all the affected customers to inform them of the error and the company's response to it.
To avoid a similar situation in the future, Hume says it has moved the archive file so that it is no longer on the same server as the live database. He says the company is pleased “we were able to prevent what could have been a nightmare”.
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