In April 2026 the NCC issued new quality of service rules requiring operators to compensate subscribers for service failures and unsolicited billing, and MTN publicly confirmed it would comply. That directive matters far less than the thing most Nigerians still don’t know, which is that a free escalation route above your network has existed for years and roughly nobody uses it. When MTN takes ₦200 for a service you never subscribed to and customer care tells you there’s nothing they can do, that is not the end of the process. It’s the first step of one.
The regulator runs a second-level complaints service that costs nothing, and operators are formally obliged to tell you it exists once they’ve closed your case. Most agents don’t. What follows is the sequence that actually gets money back, in the order it has to happen, because skipping the first stage is why most people who try this get turned away.
Start with your network, and get one thing before you hang up
The NCC will not touch a complaint you haven’t raised with your operator first. That’s not bureaucratic obstruction, it’s written into how the system works, so calling 622 straight away simply gets you redirected back to MTN or Glo with nothing gained.
Call customer care, explain the deduction, and then ask for the one thing that makes everything afterwards possible, which is a complaint ticket number. Agents don’t usually offer it. Ask directly, write it down, and don’t accept a verbal assurance that the matter has been noted. Without that reference the regulator has no record that you ever complained, and your case stops there.
While you’re on the call, note the date, the time and the agent’s name. Take screenshots of the debit alerts, and if the deduction came from a VAS subscription, screenshot the message announcing it. This all takes two minutes and it’s the difference between a complaint and an anecdote.
Give them a reasonable window, then stop waiting
Operators get a defined period to investigate and resolve, and it’s worth letting that run rather than escalating the same afternoon. What you shouldn’t do is let it drift for weeks because nobody called you back, which is the normal outcome and the reason most people give up.
If the window passes with no resolution, or the operator declares the matter closed while your money is still gone, you’re now formally entitled to escalate. The rules also require the operator to inform you of that right when it considers a case resolved and you don’t, so if nobody mentioned it, that’s a lapse on their side rather than a sign you have no options.
Calling 622 is free, and there are three other routes if you’d rather not
Dial 622 from the affected line. It’s toll-free, it’s the NCC’s own contact centre rather than your network’s, and it runs 8am to 8pm Monday through Saturday, excluding public holidays. Have your ticket number ready, because it’s the first thing they’ll ask for.
If you’d rather have everything in writing, the NCC runs a consumer portal at consumer.ncc.gov.ng with a complaint form that creates a documented trail you can check later. You can also write a letter, which the Commission asks be legible, signed, and no longer than two A4 pages, or walk into any NCC office, and there are regional ones in Ibadan, Kano, Enugu and elsewhere rather than only Abuja.
Whichever route you pick, give them your phone number, the ticket number, the dates, the amounts and evidence of payment, plus a plain explanation of what happened. The Consumer Affairs Bureau handles this free of charge, and where it finds the operator breached its contract with you or the Nigerian Communications Act, it takes the findings directly to that operator and mediates. Cases that conclude quickly come back to you by phone or email, and longer ones in writing.
What this route is good for and what it isn’t
The complaints the Bureau routinely handles are exactly the ones Nigerians deal with constantly. Unauthorised VAS subscriptions producing deductions nobody can explain. Data that vanishes far faster than the plan should allow. Doubtful billing. Lines disconnected without cause. SIM swap fraud. Porting requests that stall. If your problem sits in that list, you’re in the right place.
Where it gets murkier is data depletion, and it’s worth being honest about that before you spend an afternoon on it. The Commission has previously found that a share of complaints about disappearing data came down to background app updates and streaming the consumer hadn’t accounted for, and in one case a subscriber who insisted 20GB had vanished had actually bought 5GB and watched Netflix on a television. Before escalating, check where the data actually went, and our breakdown of why data finishes fast even when you aren’t streaming covers the usual culprits.
Court is technically available as a last resort, but the Act expects you to go through the operator and then the regulator first, and for a deduction of a few hundred naira the mediation route is the only sensible one.
Stop the bleeding before you chase the refund
Recovering one deduction achieves little if the same subscription charges you again next week. Text STOP to 2442 to activate Do Not Disturb, which opts you out of value added services across all networks, and it’s the single most effective thing you can do about recurring unexplained charges. Full DND blocks everything, and partial options exist if you want to keep certain categories.
That handles the subscriptions. If your airtime is still draining with DND active, something else is going on, and our guide to why MTN airtime keeps disappearing and how to stop it works through the other causes. The related problem of constant promotional messages is covered in our piece on stopping disturbing SMS from MTN, Glo and the rest.
The checklist, in the order it works
- Screenshot the debit alert and any subscription message.
- Call your network’s customer care and get a ticket number.
- Text STOP to 2442 so it doesn’t recur while you’re waiting.
- Give the operator its window to resolve.
- If unresolved, dial 622 with your ticket number, or file at consumer.ncc.gov.ng.
- Keep the NCC reference and follow up if nothing moves.
Operators are not indifferent to this process, because the Commission publishes complaint volumes and the new compensation framework attaches financial consequences to service failures. Individually your ₦200 is nothing to MTN. Logged formally with a ticket number attached, it becomes a data point in a file the regulator can act on, and that’s the part the customer care agent telling you nothing can be done would rather you didn’t discover. Data that disappears without explanation is a common thread in all of this, and our look at the apps quietly eating your data in the background is worth reading before you decide the network is at fault.
