EcoCash upgrade hit by glitches

ECOCASH’S upgrade did not bring much joy to it’s clients with some services missing and a near impossibility of making transactions.

Econet said the move to a more secure platform was done, but admitted there were stability issues and said service availability might be intermittent.

EcoCash had said that the planned major upgrade of its platform over the weekend was to improve system availability, user experience, security and long term capacity issues, but the option to buy airtime and data products with EcoCash was missing from lists and the platform was down in shops.

Shopkeepers were hit as well as EcoCash is the dominant means of buying goods and services in Zimbabwe.

Some clients asked EcoCash to revert to the old system as the new system had made things worse.

Others vented anger at the company on their Facebook page .

In a statement, EcoCash’s parent company, Cassava Smartech Zimbabwe’s chief executive Mr Eddie Chibi said they were currently seized with post over stability issues after they moved to a new platform.

“We successfully implemented the planned upgrade of EcoCash to a new, more secure platform, and would like to thank our valued customers for their patience over this period.

“However, we are now dealing with post-cut over stability issues to optimise the availability of various EcoCash services across the new platform, and once again request our customers to bear with us as this may result in intermittent services.”

The company also sent text messages to subscribers informing them that they can buy airtime from other outlets while the system is being stabilised.

“Dear Customer. Please note, airtime is available at Econet shops, banks, OK, Pick n Pay, Spar and airtime vendors, while the Ecocash platform is being stabilised.”

However, people needed EcoCash to buy airtime and that was not an option.