HiveComb

"Dear customer, your account has been credited with ₦4,000. Value will be deducted upon your next recharge."

Yep.
That’s me.

You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.

Once upon a time...

I’ve always been very careful when it comes to making transactions, especially digital ones. I’ve heard so many stories, people sending money to the wrong number, accidentally buying airtime instead of data, typing one wrong digit and boom! They’re in a mess. Some recover their money after a lot of back and forth, others just count their losses and move on.

Personally, I had never experienced anything that wild. Until that one night.

I was already so tired from work and battling serious sleep. But I had some pending things to take care of, a WhatsApp backup and a few updates I needed to get done overnight. The plan was to turn on my data, plug my phone in, and sleep while everything handled itself in the background. But first, I had to subscribe to a data plan.

Now, I didn’t have enough data left, and since I still had some airtime on my Airtel line, I decided to go for my usual subscription, ₦1,000 for 5GB. That plan was already a routine for me. I dialed the code like I had done many times before and started inputting the necessary replies. It was almost like muscle memory at that point. I mean, I could probably subscribe to that plan with my eyes closed. And that’s almost exactly what I did ,except this time, things didn't go as planned.

As usual, I got to the point where it asked me to confirm the plan I wanted. The prompt came up:

1. No (Buy ₦4,000 plan for more data)

2. Yes (Continue with ₦1,000 for 5GB)

With my half-closed eyes, I mistakenly selected “1” instead of “2.” And before I could blink, I saw the message pop up:

"Dear customer, your account has been credited with ₦4,000. Value will be deducted upon your next recharge."

Immediately, sleep vanished from my eyes.
₦4,000 what?!
Don’t play with me, Airtel!

I rushed to check my balance, and sure enough, ₦4,000 was sitting there, staring back at me. I was officially in debt to my network provider. I didn’t even know what to do at that point. Normally, there should’ve been a second prompt asking me to confirm before such a huge deduction. But no, they just pushed the loan straight into my account and plunged me into debt.

After hissing like 29 thousand times, I just dropped my phone and slept off. No more backup and updates. My mood was ruined.

For the next few weeks, I couldn’t even use Airtel properly. I switched to MTN and started using that line until I finally managed to clear the loan little by little. It took me a while, but I paid it off. ₦4,000 isn’t small when you weren’t planning for it.

Since that incident, I’ve promised myself one thing, I will never try to make any kind of transaction when I’m sleepy or tired. If my eyes are not sharp and focused, I’m not touching any USSD code or app. Nothing. Because next time, it might not be just ₦4,000. It could be something bank-related, and that wouldn’t be funny at all.

Images are mine.