Although customers miss two days of games, GP's account enriched with large amount

Grameenphone's FIFA World Cup Pass buyers missed two days of World Cup matches, including the opening ceremony. However, Grameenphone's account has been enriched with a large amount. Even after paying the subscription fee, they were not seeing anything on the device screen except a message as soon as the game started. Again, Grameenphone did not express any regret or mention any technical error in that message. On the contrary, the message blamed the customers. The message read, 'Device Limit Reached'.

That is, if a customer challenges the issue of not getting service even after paying the subscription fee, the simple answer of Grameenphone authorities will be, 'This customer has received the 'Device Limit Reached' notification because he connected several devices under one package.'

However, in response to a question from Views Bangladesh, Grameenphone authorities have admitted a technical glitch surrounding the FIFA World Cup package for some time in the last two days.

Investigations show that on the day of the FIFA World Cup, i.e. from May 11, Grameenphone released three packages called 'FIFA World Cup Pass': the first package is for 24 hours, priced at Tk28, the second package is for 7 days at Tk127 and the third package is for 45 days at Tk199. With this pass, it is said that the streaming of FIFA World Cup games can be watched from Grameenphone's Bioscope platform.

A former official of a mobile phone operator said on condition of anonymity that it is customary to offer such packages in view of a major national or global event. The target subscribers of such packages are 'mobile' customers. Those customers who are professionally busy with work where there is no opportunity to watch TV, or are traveling, buy such packages to watch the game on their mobile handset screen for a temporary period of time. In such cases, the lowest-priced package sells the most. Of the three packages of Grameenphone Undoubtedly, the 24-hour package of Tk28 is expected to sell more. Of the remaining two packages, the customers of the seven-day package will definitely be more than the customers of the 45-day package.

This experienced former mobile operator official also said that in case of a ‘technical error’ for any specific package or service, the service has already written on the server what kind of text notification the customers will see. In case of ‘technical error’, every customer will get the same type of notification. That is, the notification that came in the case of ‘technical error’ in the FIFA ‘FIFA World Cup Pass’ package has already been written on the server, so the customers have seen it.

In this case, it is usually written, ‘Sincerely sorry for the temporary inconvenience due to technical error.’ But one reason for giving the ‘Device Limit Reached’ message instead of this message could be the past experience. In the past, it was seen that while dealing with legal cases, screenshots of such notification messages were presented as evidence. As a result, a notification message was given, where the customer has been directly blamed for the error. As a result, this notification will not be used as evidence of Grameenphone's technical error in court in the future. Such notifications can be called 'cheat notifications' or 'fraud' in simple Bangla.

According to the analysis of the information received, low-income or short-term package customers have been the most affected in the last two days. Customers who bought a 24-hour package have lost the entire package value of Tk28. If one lakh customers of Grameenphone, which has about 100 million subscribers, also bought this package, then these 100,000 customers have been affected and Grameenphone's account has been enriched by Tk28 lakh in one day. The more the number of customers, the more the number of customers affected will increase and the enrichment of Grameenphone's account will also increase.

Sharing his experience, a customer named Farhad from Tejgaon area said that he was busy at work at night, so he took Grameenphone's seven-day 'FIFA World Cup Pass' package for Tk127 to watch the game on his smartphone in between work. But at the beginning of the opening ceremony, he saw the ‘Device Reached Limits’ message. At one point during the opening ceremony, he could watch the program for two to three minutes, but the same annoying message was displayed throughout the entire game.

He said that on the second day, the same notification came within two to three minutes of the start of the Canada-Bosnia match as on the previous day. As a result, he could not watch the game anymore. He fears that he will probably have to spend the remaining five days of the package validity seeing such notifications!

However, expressing his regret to the customers, in response to a question from Views Bangladesh, Grameenphone’s Head of Communications Sharfuddin Ahmed Chowdhury said, 'Due to an unexpected technical glitch, some customers faced disruptions during FIFA World Cup streaming on the Bioscope+ platform. Our team has given the matter top priority and worked to normalize the service as soon as possible. We sincerely apologize for the temporary inconvenience caused due to this. At the same time, we thank our customers for their patience and cooperation.'

When asked about this, telecommunications and information technology sector analyst Abu Nazam Tanveer Hossain told Views Bangladesh, 'Technical error is the fault or mistake of the mobile operator. Therefore, the operator concerned should make arrangements to properly compensate the affected customers, and should not be limited to just expressing regret.' He said that the customer who had 24 hours to watch the opening match, his loss is irreparable. Because he took a short-term package with the intention of watching a specific match on a specific day. Will this loss be compensated by giving him the opportunity to watch another match? Therefore, as a regulatory body, BTRC should pay attention to the matter. The operator concerned must be held accountable and it is important to take action by applying the rules and regulations that can be applied in the law.