MTN Rwanda has cancelled the 10 per cent service fee recently imposed on its Me2U product following numerous complaints from users that also attracted the regulator’s attention.

The telecom firm will pledged to refund affected customers. "We apologise for the inconvenience,” it said in a statement yesterday. The firm explained that the fee had been introduced to recover the investments associated with the recent revamping of the Me2U service and align with industry practices to charge for airtime transfers. "However, in the spirit of putting ‘customers first’ we are now happy to be the only ones offering the service free of charge since we have realised that the move was negatively impacting users,” Gaspard Bayigane, the MTN acting marketing officer, said in the statement.

Revamped Me2U service

Bayigane said the firm recently revamped its airtime Me2U service by increasing the daily Me2U limit and offering more flexibility to transfer airtime from Rwf100 up to Rwf20,000, which had forced it to introduce a 10 per cent fee. The service is exclusively for its pre-paid subscribers and the previous limit was Rwf6,000. "The revamped Me2U service was geared at enabling customers to transfer a higher amount of airtime to friends and family,” the official said.