If it has not yet happened to you several times, it will happen to you eventually. A failed Ecocash transaction is a headache that creates more headaches, especially if, as normally happens, they debit your wallet balance but the payment does not reach the merchant who you wanted to pay. Half the time it’s easy enough to get your money back but its the other half that is the stuff of nightmares.

It’s so frustrating to deal with Ecocash to recover these amounts that sometimes we just give up especially if the amount involved is small. We lost about $23 months ago, back when that money could buy you cooking oil, salt and Royco soup. It was a failed bank to wallet transaction, to this day we haven’t seen our money-neither Cassava nor FBC Bank have been helpful on that front. Now thanks due to inflation, you cannot even buy monthly WhatsApp bundles with that amount.

It’s too hard to get your money back

Ecocash’s procedure to get your money back often ends up costing you more money to fix and can take months if you ever get you money back.

First, you have to get a letter from the Merchant confirming that you did not receive service and that the Merchant never saw the money. Some merchants actually demand you go get a statement from Ecocash first before they give you the letter. Why they do it is a mystery.

Getting that Ecocash statement involves you paying Ecocash or some Ecocash agent to print the statement and stamp it. If you do that using Ecocash it essentially means you are paying Ecocash to give you your money back. After you get the no service letter you have to submit it to Ecocash which means more lines, most agents are so busy selling and buying forex they won’t serve you, so you have to go to Econet.

It keeps happening

USSD is such an outdated method when it comes to handling payments and its slow. Ecocash payment errors keep happening. One of the people it happened to recently is Elias Mlambo, Zim Morning Post Editor.

Oh my God…it means travelling again to OK Bindura…to get a letter…@EcoCashZW give us a better solution…I think surely your system shows all the transactions…mari yacho inobva yavharana ne transport or fuel…zvese nedata to contact you https://t.co/r6HKh0MnPi
— Elias Mambo/Zim Morning Post (@elias_mambo) October 26, 2019

It exposes the ridiculousness of this system. You are on the move and you try to buy something in another town and the transaction fails. Does it make sense to go back there just so you can get a no service letter?

Our advice to you, if you can avoid using Ecocash and can use swipe, always prefer swipe, it is faster and very unlikely to debit your account without you getting service.