Keeping in tune a new ICASA regulation, MTN will ditch its old airtime balance check number, voicemail numbers and customer care numbers (short codes) in the coming weeks.
MTN is the second South African telecoms network to announce its new list of short codes, following Vodacom’s announcement earlier this week.
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“From 24 March 2018 the short codes that MTN customers use to check their airtime balance, retrieve voicemail messages and to contact the call centre, will be replaced with a new set of numbers,” the company explained in a press release.
“To allow customers time to familiarise themselves with the new codes, the old and new codes will run concurrently, until MTN is comfortable our customers are at ease with the new system.”
MTN’s old customer care number, voicemail numbers and other short codes will be terminated on 24 March 2018
The customer care number, which used to be 173 will move to 135. The additional customer care numbers of 1555, 808 and 809 will also fall away.
Voicemail retrieval and deposit numbers will change too, from 100 and 111, to 132 and 134 respectively.
Airtime recharge and balance enquiry numbers will switch from 141 and 555 to a unified number of 136.
And finally, a new number dubbed “account enquiries” will be added as 137.
“Our customers want to be able to interact with us simply and easily. They are already using the best network in the country and now we want to make sure that all their interactions with us are as seamless as the network we provide,” explained the company’s corporate affairs exec Jacqui O’Sullivan.
“These short codes are numeric, so they will be easier to remember and we won’t phase out the old codes until we are sure our valued customers have made the transition to the new codes.”
The old codes will be terminated from 24 March 2018.
Feature image: warrenski via Flickr (CC 2.0 BY-SA, resized)
