This is to bring to your notice about ridiculous hidden charges from using *737# USSD Code introduced to your customer. The purpose of the service has been defeated, this service cannot longer use without enough credit on your phone. This has done more harm than good to me.
For the past few months, I have been experience sudden airtime credit disappeared on my phone and made a complain to the telecom provider, I was told it’s not from them, that I use the credit through some service on my phone.
It took me a very long time before I discovered that it was GTBank *737# USSD Code Service that continually deducted my money each time I dial the CODE *737#. Because this service I solely relied upon on all my banking transaction, including buying of airtime credit.
This service has now useless as P in Psychology, as it can no longer work without Airtime credit, and this is a service I use to buy my airtime, the following is the challenges I have been encountered using the so call *737# USSD Code with my Airtel line mean to solve problem:

1) If you dial *737# on your phone, you will be welcome with flash message, and money deducted from your call credit

2) If you want to proceed by press number & send, another money will be removed from your credit for the next page

3) You still need to press number, to proceed, and another money is removed from your credit.

4) As you still need to type number to proceed with your transaction, it depend on what you want to do, from transfer to other bank, buy airtime with your register number or buying airtime for third-party number etc, while you still need to proceed to the next page by press number & send. Another money deducted from your airtime credit.

5) In the process of your transaction, or just before final stage of the whole process, you press a send button to continue, and you are welcome with error termination message. This occurred due to network problem, and all your money deducted earlier from the first stage to last just wasted & vanished without complete your transaction and you will need to start over again by dialing*737#.

6) You dial *737# again to start afresh, money deducted, you proceed by type number & send, another money deducted for the flash message that will appear, after type number & send. You continue these processes & your money keep on deducting and suddenly you encounter an error termination message again, due to your network problem or server.

7) Because of what you want to do is very important and urgently, either to buy airtime credit or to do money transfer, you have no choice than to try again.

You dial *737#, you got a flash message, and money deducted from your airtime credit, you proceed to press number & send, you receive another flash message and money deducted again, you want to proceed to the next page & suddenly you receive message of process termination, this time around is not a network problem, but all your credit has been completely removed (but you don’t know)

9) You dial *737# again and you are welcome with message “Dear Customer, you have Insufficient airtime to use this Service”.
Now you are stranded as you cannot either buy credit with the service nor able to do money trasfer. And if you are cashless or penniless at that time, you will be helpless and frustrated, as you will not have credit on your phone to call any family or friend, also you cannot buy credit with the said service. Then you are On Your Own. OYO

This is so frustrated, devastated and rubbish, all in the bid to make money/profit from customer GTBank blindly monetize the use of USSD code of *737#, the best banking service ever in Africa, this service that has ease the problem of banking transaction for most Nigeria.
If this is how we are going to use this service, I will urge the bank as a matter of urgency to scrap the use of *737# service, because the purpose of which it was built to solve problem has been defeated.

This is what I have being going through from use of your service with my airtel line;

ARE YOU EXPERIENCING THE SAME THING?

Nope I haven't experienced such and I'm not experiencing anything like that... maybe it's the network you're using

i agree, i av neva experienced such.

Jaykolo10:
Nope I haven't experienced such and I'm not experiencing anything like that... maybe it's the network you're using

Jaykolo10:
Nope I haven't experienced such and I'm not experiencing anything like that... maybe it's the network you're using

How often do you use star 737# ?
Check your Account balance now and reply to this post again. Your account would have been debited with N10 just for that simple transaction. I think it just started,cos I haven't experienced it before until this year.

HRHQueenPhil:
i agree, i av neva experienced such.

How often do you use star 737# ?
Check your Account balance now and reply to this post again. Your account would have been debited with N10 just for that simple transaction. I think it just started,cos I haven't experienced it before until this year.

Its only peculiar to airtel lines, you are charged 5naira for every twenty seconds spent on your bank portal, not just gtbank ussd portal only but all banks. However, if you use the direct string e.g *737*100# to load on your line directly, that attracts no fee, but *737#, *966#, *384#, *909#, *906#, etc attracts the fee.

Very soon other network providers might buy the idea too, perhaps to encourage more data consumption while using mobile app. My opinion though.

Really, this is not new. It has been for years just that the deduction is always less than 1naira for the transactions, so, you might not be aware. This I say with all first hand knowledge.
I use mtn and anytime my account balance is 0.00 I always get error responses while trying to access bank ussd.

I now confirmed it, it's from airtel alone

They charge money for every flash message that show on your screen, when you dial USSD

What I want to know is, are they charging me directly from my bank account any time I check my bank acount balance?