Exclusive: Celcos Employees Allegedly Involved in Activation of VAS Without Customers’ Consent

Mobile Phone FraudYou may not remember, but we did a post in past on automatic activation of value added services on mobile numbers, for which customers have to pay for services they never subscribed themselves.

There are chances that some of you may have noticed that CRBT (Caller Ring Back Tunes) is automatically activated on your number, or maybe any other VAS service for which your mobile credit is mysteriously deducted.

Its not your cellular company that deduct your balance automatically rather there are agents who activate VAS on random numbers to achieve their targets and resultantly your balance vanishes away, we are told by sources working in mobile phone companies.

Its not that agents are the only culprit in emptying the pockets of mobile phone subscribers, cellular companies are responsible too for keeping the VAS activation targets high and for pushing the agents to do whatever is needed to achieve their targets. Also to mention, the money minted by automatic activation of VAS goes into mobile phone companies’ accounts.

Its hard to estimate the value of money that mobile phone customers may have paid for services that were activated without their consent.

It is learned that automatic activation of VAS is substantially high in rural areas as compared to big cities and for those customers with high usage.

We can confirm that at least two cellular companies are aware of the issue and at lease one mobile phone company has investigated the case against probable culprits. ProPakistani has with it all the documentary evidences on this.

Tip for Consumers: If you doubt that your balance gets deducted without any activity then call your help line and ask for all the paid (VAS) services activated against your number. Keep those that you have subscribed yourself and block rest of the services.

Even better, give your support tough time by asking them the name of agent who has automatically activated the service. Also you can ask for the date and time of activation to register complaint against that particular agent.

How to Complain? PTA is the authority that looks after such things, so there is no other door available. Follow this link to know how to register your complaint.

If you are one of the victim, you can share your story in below comments..!

Tech and telecom reporter for over 15 years


  • I have been complaining about this to Ufone people for a long time, but they did not listen to my complaints. This compelled me to switch to Mobilink.

  • i totally agree with this . VAS is the biggest way through companies take out money forcibly from customers

  • mere pas jazz hai.aur pehle jazz ne mere number par back ground music active ki.mene service bnd karwa k thak gaya.phr khud he lag jati the.phr mene apna number zong mein krwaya lya.to kuch skon hua.ab phr jazz pe aya hn.to parson jazz talk khud he lga.di.3 dafa bnd karwae.phr active kar k mara balance ura dya sara.ab phr zong ko parmanent network bnaunga.kam az kam balance to ni katen ge.jazz aur ufone vas activate krne mein aur balance chori krne mein mahir han.mara dost ufone se tang hai.

  • Yeah , exactly i can confirm this scam; i’m a Ufone customer, had too much balance deduction problem from many months, i called the helpline , they said i have activated phonebook saver though i didn’t; then had to deactivated myself. Sigh

  • well in Ufone Missed Call Alert activated automatically
    Mostly Ufone customer affected because ufone introduce VAS daily and send 5 to 10 sms daily for different VAS.

  • I was quite worried about my usage. whn i called ufone they told me many services were activated. which i never activated. in that miss call alert was activated for more than a year, but i never received any notification msg for miss call. i made a compliant for that and never got response from them.. UFONE is sending now push messages for services, when u press OK to close button they get activated. they are abusing all customers.

  • Telenor is one company in name of upselling they are full time looting custumers call help line u will be given pitches to buy vas

  • Any Celco will be stupid enough if it does not have control over the same. There is/must be a team that controls fraud in CELCOs

  • Perhaps this has been happening to me since I bought a cell phone. On my every Ufone number I had to deactivate this! I guess this mostly happens with Ufone users.

  • I don’t think so that is possible. Because a agent just make a VAS request against a number and consumer will receive sms. After this if consumer will reply this sms with “y” or “yes” . Then VAS will be activated

    • I have downgraded my Ufone Postpaid to U49 and I have not made a single call since last bill. My current bill is Rs. 284/-. That’s why I switched to Mobilink. Here you have to make call to activate everything.

  • My ufone number have utone service activated automatically even after i deactivate it. It happens almost every week. I am not happy and seriously considering to change to something else.

    Yes i tried talking to helpline twice. They dont believe me that it activates automatically. :(

  • Ufone wud be the biggest thug network in this scam.They r always up to steal ur balance n automatically activate value added services n these days they r sending annoying flash msgs to activate VAS.

  • I also suffered a lot from those times of activities by mobile companies and now a days they also call you and sms you for their advertisements.

  • seems as if ufone is high on the go to charge customers regarding unwanted vas… i have also suffered from ufone for mca charges when i ported my zong number to ufone due to network issues at zong… transferred than to telenor but they always took back sms/call bundles at eid and other events so now thinking to switch to mobilink or warid

  • I think its weird that celcos doing this, you people should go to CCP – competition commission of Pakistan along with PTA, these authorities should take action against the culprit companies.

  • This is absolutely true. But the fact is they deduct further money for unsubcribing the service you didn’t subscribe.

  • Ufone is on the top in this scam they automatically activate many VAS without asking from their costumer,

  • its all false thinking non any VAS could be get activated it self we have all track records, please feel free to call visit to our service centers or dial to call center for details.

  • Ufone is definitely the biggest culprit in deducting the balance. Their Call center people always say that there is nothing activated against your number but the balance gets deducted daily.

  • I have two postpaid numbers with Telenor and faced this issue frequently. Had to get them to do all my VAS activations at Telenor customer service centre on my personal request only. This helped in getting rid of these activations.


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