But within two hours, Digicel had sorted out the problem and began retrieving the extra credit, stating later that it would have been unethical to allow customers to keep it.

The company said yesterday that "loss" in sales "was negligible", according to Digicel's commercial director Harry Smith.

The glitch started at 6:00 pm and was islandwide.  Withdrawal of the credit began at 8:00 pm into yesterday morning.  Smith said that the company would investigate the cause today.

"We retrieved most of it.  You have to remember that it is $10 a minute for calls so you would have had to use 500 minutes of calling time to use it up," he said.

If customers called abroad it would have been some $17 per minute or 294 calling minutes in order to exhaust the $5,000 credit.

The Digicel network was reportedly extremely busy that night, signalling that most of Digicel's approximately 1.3 million customers were rushing the system to make use of the free calling minutes.

The state regulator, Office of Utilities Regulation, agreed with Digicel's withdrawal of the extra credit on grounds that the customers "were not entitled to more credit than they bought."  The activity could have had the effect of boosting sales, but Digicel Jamaica's chief executive officer David Hall said that the glitch was not deliberate.

"That is ridiculous," he told the Observer yesterday.  "I am absolutely sure that we would not do anything deliberate like this to boost sales.  Because it causes a disaster.  And the network becomes congested."

He added that such a move would hurt the goodwill of the company.

At least one customer felt that Digicel should have compensated its customers or sent a message to them about the glitch.

"I think there is something wrong with what they did.  They should have compensated people for misleading them.  They should have left even $100 credit," said Peta-Ann Long, 19, a student.

Long, her sister and father each got $5,000 credit.  But in the morning they all lost it.

Princess Woodbourne, 30, a skin-care advisor, managed to consume a good chunk of her free credit.

"I used about $600 worth of credit and I wanted to use the rest today but it was gone this morning."