With more than 10 million subscribers, the company's network system has been under great pressure especially during promotions and Friday evenings.

June 24, 2008: Safaricom has refunded Sh1.6 million worth of airtime, causing a pleasant surprise to 57,000 subscribers whose credit was erroneously deducted during the ongoing free call promotion.

Just a day after the launch of the promotion last month a number of Safaricom subscribers complained that they had lost airtime while making normal calls.

Most of them said they had not registered for the promotion as was required but found their credit balances lower on making calls during the free calls period of between 9 pm, later adjusted to 11 pm to ease congestion, and 6am in the morning.

The lower credit balances suggested that people on usual tariffs who had not registered for the promotion which ends on Thursday were being charged above the applicable tariff rates.

When Business Daily brought the matter to the attention of Safaricom, CEO Michael Joseph said the overcharge would be investigated and anomalies rectified.

Yesterday, Mr Joseph said the company had finalised the refund process. He said the rebates were determined automatically and the affected subscribers did not need to produce proof to get the refund.

"Refunds were finalised last week. Approximately 57, 000 subscribers were refunded Sh1.6 million," he said.

The refunds should help restore faith in the billing technology, which picked the total cost of calls charged during the 'call free' period against what was charged, effecting the refund.

This is not the first time Safaricom is refunding money to subscribers. Last October, the company refunded some of subscribers who had complained of being billed for undelivered Short Message Service destined to Telkom Kenya network.

Mr Joseph attributed the problem to subscribers using the system during a test run. The refunds involved 53,410 failed SMS worth Sh260,000.

Besides the confusion on charges, the promotion elicited network congestion as subscribers who had bought Sh100 scratch cards - the key condition for one to benefit from the free calls -made calls at the same time.

Mr Joseph had advised subscribers to spread their calls within the promotion hours. This was not apparently effective and Safaricom responded by adjusting the time to 11pm until 6am, a measure that has since eased the congestion experienced in the network.

Launched on 28th May 2008, the objective of the call free promotion was to thank over 10 million Safaricom subscribers for their loyalty. This came hot on the heels of the recently launched ONGEA tariff , which charges a flat Sh10 per minute for intra network calls and Sh25 for calls across other networks.

With slightly more than 10 million ten subscribers the company's network system has been under great pressure especially during promotions and Fridays evenings.

Another pressure is also seemingly emerging on its money transfer system M-pesa. Two weeks ago M-pesa users were not able to use the service smoothly as most dealers said the system was down.

M-pesa currently has 1.6 million subscribers and the company is currently going for the corporate organizations to supplement the individual dealers who at times experience cash flow problem making users to travel a distance to redeem their money. Other than the individual dealers M-pesa is currently available at Equity bank outlets, PostBank and Housing and Finance.

Last week, Safaricom introduced a payment for its SIM card replacement beginning last week. Now a subscriber wishing to replace his or her SIM card will have to pay Sh20 for the service.

"The reintroduction of payment for SIM replacement follows the introduction of the Self Service SIMEX . The thinking behind the proposed rate was to introduce a nominal fee (as it's still heavily discounted) so as to attach value to the card and avoid waste" said Joseph.