Is Africell cheating their subscribers of data?

Subscribers of the country’s biggest private cellular network have recently taken to Facebook to complain that their megabytes are disappearing faster than they should.

Some of them accused Africell of stealing and appealed to the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) to intervene.

Mustapha Manneh, the editor of Kartong Weekly News wrote on his Facebook Page: “This [is] totally unacceptable. "CHEEMM LAAKAT" How did you expect me to buy D55 megabytes in every 20hours. Africell is killing me.”

Others said the Lebanese company, which launched its operation in 2001 with a mission of making telecommunication accessible to every Gambian at the most affordable rate, is fond of cheating its subscribers to make exorbitant profits.

“Honestly, I think the extent of silence in this country is beyond imagination. No one cares about what our representatives or service providers do. The extent of cheating is just too much. My experience with Africell these days is just bad.....100mb consumed in a day for an android phone. I mean only on Facebook, WhatsAPP and Viber. Aside from that, the bad connection experienced is crazy. PURA needs to act accordingly,” said famous youth leader, Lamin K. Saidy.

A British woman living in The Gambia, Michelle Evers wasn’t also happy with Africell. 

“500mb my phone ate it just under 42hours and my computer ate 1gig in 4days even my nopal seller did not want to sell me more he told me go in and complain as my data counters on both devices are showing correct usage which is like 1/5th of my data while Africell are stealing the rest. I’ve topped both devices again my phone alerting me data finishing yet my device only used 119mb and furious.”

Taking to their Facebook page on Tuesday evening, Africell has apologized for the “megabyte leakage” and promised to refund all affected subscribers.