Minsk resident Dmitry told a strange story about debts to a MYFIN journalist. And it’s not about fraudsters.
Photo: AP Photo / Pavel Bednyakov
“This story began back in January,” Dmitry recounts. “Two years ago, we connected a SIM card for our child. One day, I was charging the child’s phone and saw dozens of unread SMS messages. I opened them and saw: ‘Pay a debt of 450 rubles.’ Initially, I thought my son had messed up somewhere – maybe downloaded some paid app.”
“When my wife and I saw this message, the child was already asleep. My wife called MTS – they told her that since the message indicated A1 company, she should resolve the issue with A1. My wife dialed the A1 call center – at first, they told her that such a number wasn’t in their database at all and that she should call MTS to sort it out. She called A1 support again to clarify: if the number isn’t in the database, then there’s no debt, right? Another employee answered this time. She confirmed that there was no debt on the number and said that she would disconnect the number from these message mailings.”
But soon, a new SMS arrived about a new debt. And then another one. The amounts changed: sometimes decreasing, sometimes increasing.
“We even got used to these SMS messages and temporarily stopped paying attention to them. But then it all got annoying. What kind of debt? Where did the amounts come from? Are we really not owed anything? The SMS message included a link for the client with debt details, but we couldn’t register through it. When the situation continued into March, we sent a written inquiry to an online consultant at A1. And we received an unexpected answer.”
“The third attempt to sort it out was successful. The online consultant explained that our number was listed as a contact for another (possibly former) client of the A1 company.” How could this have happened?
Most likely, the answer is very simple: “When we were getting this SIM card for our child, we weren’t told that there are ‘clean’ SIM cards and cards ‘with a history.’ Our child’s phone number previously belonged to someone else. Apparently, the former owner once registered something with A1, which is why our child is receiving these debt notifications.”
“Essentially, no one is to blame, circumstances just happened that way,” says Dmitry. “Now I need to go somewhere, fill out some applications, so the SMS messages stop coming. I don’t really want to deal with that. My experience tells me: if you’re connecting a SIM card – you’ll be calmer if you take a ‘clean’ number that has definitely not belonged to anyone before.”
"Received an SMS: pay 450 rubles." A resident of Minsk's child receives messages about other people's debts – Наша Ніва
