The Advertising Regulatory Board (ARB) has found that MTN’s ambiguous in-app offers misled customers regarding the duration of its one-day data bundles.
The complainant, Christo Boshoff, brought the issue to the ARB, stating that the mobile operator offers one-day bundles within its app with no clear indication of when they expire.
Boshoff purchased a 2.5GB one-day bundle expecting it to last 24 hours. However, the data allocation expired at 00:01 — around 11 hours after he had purchased it.
“Yesterday I bought a 2.5GB data bundle valid for 1 day (this is per the app),” Boshoff wrote in his submission to the ARB.
“I purchased it at around 12:51 pm yesterday. I did not use all the data so I expected the remaining data to be valid until 12:50 pm the following day, as 1 Day = 24hrs.”
“However, this morning the data had disappeared. I then contacted MTN to complain and they told me that the data is only valid for the date you purchased it on, not for 24hrs as advertised,” he added.
Boshoff explained that MTN’s weekly bundles work the way he expected daily products to work, with the data allocation expiring at midnight on the seventh day.
The message he received from MTN support is shown below.