m-Mawaqif - When you run out of balance

I was under the impression that you always have to keep your m-Mawaqif account topped up in order to use the service. I managed to keep up for this long, however I found out something new. Once your m-Mawaqif account runs out of credit/balance, the system charges your mobile phone (which sent the SMS) for the ticket!

Well, this happened silently. To double check I went through my phone messages and sure enough, I could see the difference:

It's good in the sense that it gets me the ticket anyhow and I don't have to worry about getting a ticket manually (its a nightmare trying to find coins or purchasing an Extra gum while turning in a note of 10AED) or topping up my m-Mawaqif account in those panicky morning hours. Since my mobile connection is post-paid, my mobile bill swells up, buts its the same thing anyway (with the extra 0.12 AED/SMS charges).

However it comes as a shock at first. I don't blame Mawaqif, they had sent a message earlier telling me to top up my Mawaqif balance.

I had found this out when I was going through my mobile phone bill. I found SMSs worth 15AED done daily to a number 9924!

I was shocked at first. I called Du for an explanation of this hefty 15AED daily charge but they were not able to give a satisfactory answer. I was arguing with the billing team that I never sent those SMSs to 9924, they said that I did :).

Then I called Mawaqif, they also never heard of such a case. According to the Mawaqif call center agent, this should never happen and that the system will not generate a ticket if you don't have enough balance.  

Seems like this is a newly implemented feature in the Mawaqif system and not many people know about this.