Kakao’s flagship advertising platform Kakao Moment has been criticised by some of its users for automatically deducting a certain amount of money without their consent.
On Monday, April 1st, a system error occurred in the credit card registered by some advertisers, who run ads through Kakao Moment. The system tried to make forced payments several times without their consent. Some users argued that automatic payment was made on a maximum of minutes and that automatic payment was not stopped until the maximum amount of 1 billion won (approx. US$ 1 million) was filled.
It is reported that the actual amount of automatic payment was between 500,000 won (about US$500) and up to 3 million won (about US$3000) on the same day. Some users who suffered the damage tipped off the news via social networking sites such as Facebook.
However, even without counselling phones that can contact Kakao Moment and the chatbot that helps counselling through SNS only repeated the same words, increasing confusion. It was reported that Kakao Moment’s payment error lasted about 18 minutes from 10:47 a.m. to 11:05 a.m.
“We paid 3 million won (about US$3000) six times, 500,000 won (about US$500) each, on six occasions,” said an official from a company based in Busan. “I asked for a connection because I only have chat consultations, but even this one was told that I couldn’t connect because there were many requests for counselling.”
Kakao said, “We understand the problem as a result of errors in its internal system. Currently, we have cancelled the approval of the card during the period of the failure in a package.”
