Cellulant Zimbabwe’s service is still down across all mobile networks. The *365# USSD code which allowed users to purchase Airtime, TelOne, Prepaid-Electricity and pay your DSTV account all from one platform on any mobile network.
The service, however, has been down for the past week and a half. Cellulant has said:
….our services have been down due to maintenance, and assurance testing to make sure that services are easily accessible to our customers.
….We have done so due to an upgrade to our systems that will provide ease of payment at each customer touchpoint, and as such needed to make sure that all was in order before we released this to the customers.
Cellulant claims to have compensated all affected clients by reimbursing their money that failed to be processed/matched due to the downtime by saying:
….For those customers affected by this, we have put measures in place to assure that you will be compensated for the inconvenience occurred by use of our service in the time that it has been done….
We have covered Cellulant Zimbabwe quite extensively over the past months since its entry into the Zimbabwean market. This includes an interview with the Cellulant Zimbabwe team and them winning the most prestigious African Fin-Tech award over the past weekend.
The technical problems being faced by Cellulant Zimbabwe is not a true reflection of a company that just won a continental award. What is most needed by clients is the reliability of a service. Being down for a week and a half is not something you would want in the tech industry, and failure to alert the public of the possible downtime only adds to the issue.
Although the issues stem from an upgrade on the system, this time-period Cellulant is losing might persuade its clients to seek other services, this is a service that needs to be available 24/7 to justify its actual purpose.
