Safaricom has come out clear that it’s not illegal to buy or sell bundles mwitu. “Bundles Mwitu” is a term coined by Kenyans on social media to refer to Safaricom data bundles purchased in bulk by some individuals who are good in maths and later broken down to small bundles that ultimately end up being cheaper than what Safaricom already packages for sale to the consumer. The breakdown includes usual bundles and night-shift bundles. These are then sold by sharing (sambaza bundles) the bundles to buyers. So basically it’s picking from one pocket and putting into the other.
Safaricom says that the business is not illegal, but that the company has not licensed these as resellers and thus cautions customers from purchasing the bundles. This is because according to Safaricom, consumers stand a high risk of being defrauded. Safaricom has also gone ahead to reduce the number of times one can do an internet sambaza from 50 to 20 times a month, thus effectively reducing the number of times the resellers can sell the bundles mwitu significantly.
“Safaricom has not licensed any third party providers to resell our data bundles. While we are aware that there are some providers who claim to offer discounted data bundles to their clients, we have not initiated any partnerships of that kind. We would advise that customers either purchase their data bundles directly from us or verify that their vendor is authorized to sell legitimate Safaricom services prior to investing any money in these services.”
Kenyans have been taking advantage of the cheap costs of the bundles mwitu that relied on sambaza data (internet sharing) for sometime and this has been a buzz online, well including mwitu extending to other things that come easily. There are claims online that bundles mwitu has been shut down, technically that is not the case as bull data purchase still exists and sambaza data is still on.
