Recalling billion-dollar SIMs, what does VinaPhone say?

Recently, a post appeared on social media about a case of a VinaPhone subscriber whose phone number was revoked and returned to the number warehouse. Before he could get it back, someone else registered to use it.

Specifically, according to the reflection, due to being busy with work and having to travel continuously, the owner of phone number 0xx7.999.999 did not know that the phone number he was using had expired and was revoked. This is a prepaid subscription, with no messages or calls for 90 days.

When the phone number was revoked, the subscriber said that the account still had a balance of 3 million VND. When he contacted the network operator, he was shocked to learn that his phone number had been assigned to another user.

Regarding the incident, a representative of VinaPhone said that the collection of expired prepaid mobile phone numbers is regulated by the Ministry of Information and Communications, and has been implemented and publicly announced on the network operator's website for many years. This regulation aims to optimize the efficiency of exploiting the telecommunications number warehouse and limit the situation of junk SIMs.

According to the network operator's regulations, after the prepaid subscription account expires, the subscription will be locked in one direction, and 10 days later, it will be locked in both directions (before locking in one direction, the system will send many notification messages).

The time the network operator keeps the subscriber's number on the system after the subscriber has been locked in both directions is 30 days. After this time, the subscriber number will be kept for another 15 days to consider reissuing if the customer continues to need to use it. After this time, the subscriber number will be reused according to regulations.

For phone number 0xx7.999.999, the subscriber number was locked one way on August 19, 2024, locked two ways on August 29, 2024, the number is kept and waiting for recovery until October 12, 2024 (45 days from the time of locking two ways).

According to VinaPhone, to ensure customers' rights, this network has sent many messages recommending to maintain service usage to avoid one-way and two-way blocking.

Specifically, the network operator sent a text message warning that subscribers would be locked one way on August 14-16-18 and warned that subscribers would be locked one way on August 24-26-28.

After sending notification messages, VinaPhone did not receive any customer feedback, and the above subscriber number did not use telecommunication services, so the system locked the account one-way and locked both ways when the account expired according to regulations.

“After the deadline for customers to restore their service, VinaPhone will reuse and put this phone number into a new issuance mode on November 19, 2024. The reuse of the subscriber number is carried out according to regulations, after ensuring the rights and time for customers who need to restore their service,” said a VinaPhone representative.

Regarding the information shared by some personal Facebook pages and social media sites about this incident, according to a representative of VinaPhone, the information posted on social media is not true, is stereotypical, and damages the reputation of the business. VinaPhone has requested the authorities to support the handling in accordance with the law.