How to stop unnecessary service charges from your network providers

It is very annoying to see messages from service you do not willingly subscribe to. You wake up to airtime deductions for a service you know nothing about and also a service that does not benefit you in any way.

But before we blame the network providing companies, we need to be extremely careful with the pop up messages we see on our screen, asking to click OK. Some of the messages like that come with a charge; it can be daily, weekly or monthly.

If you see any message on your screen asking to confirm or click YES/OK, instead click the CANCEL. Things like this automatically activate service on your line and charges from your airtime balance as they wish.

The purpose of this very article is to teach you on how you can unsubscribe from these services if you found one active. First, we will check to see if there is any active service.

How to check for unnecessary services

1.   Dial *305#, if there is no active service found, you will see the message pop up.

Note: this same code work with all network providers. So if you check with your MTN line, try it with Airtel, Glo and even 9mobile to see if there any unwanted service active.

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How to unsubscribe from unwanted services

1.   When you dial *305#, you get to see a pop up stating how many services are active on your line.

2.   Choose option one (1) and click SEND. You must know that, this method is base on what MTN network providers give you.

3.   Next, you will get to see two options. One to cancel the active services and another is to exit the process. Now select option one to cancel all your active services.

4.   Lastly, you will receive message stating “your request is being processed. You will receive a confirmation SMS soon. Thank you!”

The code to dial is the same, but the options are not really the same. Now if you dial same code using your Glo line, you will surly get different procedure.

 

For example;

If you dial *305# using any Glo network provider, two options will show up, option one is to cancel active services, while option two is exit process. Choose base on what you want.

If you happen to select option one, two more options will show up again. Option one, “My Active Subscriptions” and the other option to exit. Choose the active subscriptions, which option one and press SEND button.

Now, from the next pop up window, you get to see how many unwanted subscriptions are active. If there is none, you will see a message saying, “sorry, you do not have any active service”.

Finally, you can kick out all unwanted services deducting your airtime without your notice.

Updated:

Another way in which these unwanted services got stocked in our mobile lines is some of the websites we browse. So many sites online have what they call smart/direct link.

Smart link is for advertisement purpose and they carried ads that sponsored by our mobile service providers, and they make you to subscribe for a service, where you’re to pay monthly, weekly or daily.

Now some these services already ticked the auto renewal option, which means it will continue charging you until you unsubscribe from it.

I will drop a screenshot of what these services look like and I will also make a video on how you can deactivate from them.

video:

You can see that, at the time of making this videos, I've one (1) service active. this said service have been deducting #20 from my airtime balance for past four days now.

Since you know how to check if there any service active and the very step to take in stopping them, it is time to know how you can prevent them from your line.

It is not grantee that doing what I am about teaching you will stop such services from your line permanently, but it will reduce to some level.

Two ways to prevent unwanted airtime deduction

Base on my personal research, I got to discover the two major reasons why these services are active on our lines.

• 1.      The first is from the road side Sim card sellers, they keep record of your details and even the mobile numbers and sell them out to bulk SMS companies and in return, these bulk SMS companies use the numbers to whatever way that will profit them, including activating your line on a service that will lead to your airtime deduction in daily, weekly or monthly basis.

Solution: so do well to go register your Sim card at accredited center. Try not to be giving out your mobile number to strangers.

• 2.      The second why we get trap into these services is some of the website we visit and accept certain services. Some websites will ask you to just click a button and give a harmless subscription without you knowing that there are auto renewal button active and you’ll be charge according how they want.

Solution: when you see subscribe button on any website, carefully check through it to see if there auto-renewal option, and also know if you click yes the service will keep on charging you. lastly, check if the subscription required airtime or cash.

Below is an image showing how some of these websites asking you to use airtime as subscription payment.

It is now up to you what you’ll do with information you’ve gotten from this article.

In my next article, I’ll teach you some of the settings you need to turn off to reduce consumption of your mobile data.

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Note: these said settings are within your phone, so stick around to found type of settings needed to be turn off. 

Do well to check from time to time, as some of these services automatically activate themselves without you knowing it.

Feel free to ask question base on anything you do not understand here.

Thank you for your time!