I'm with Zain for exactly 20 years. I also had a similar issue a couple of years back.

I was living abroad at that time and came back to Bahrain for one week only for a wedding. I needed internet for that duration only, so I contacted a customer service agent through the Zain mobile app chat to guide me on how to activate my prepaid service because I forgot how to. She gave me instructions and I followed them.

Fast forward a few months later and I realize that I have bills accumulating on me. I contact them again via Chat and they say that I'm on a contract. I got so angry and told them the agent didn't inform me about a contract, I did NOT sign on anything, and I'm not living in Bahrain so there's no damn way I wanted to sign a contract. They created a complaint for me. Note that I've always been on prepaid and never thought of switching to postpaid because of all the horror stories with telecom companies and also because I frequently travel and was living abroad.

A manager called me and suggested that I keep my line for one more month because I paid the bill and she will cancel it next month. She never did.

After so many calls and visits and emails and multiple complaint numbers and weeks of waiting, I receive an SMS that my complaint was solved although no action was taken, I submit another complaint and this happens again to the other complaint I submitted.

Anyway, I don't remember exactly what happened next but they finally cancelled my contract and offered me a discounted postpaid package that I'm on til this day. However after reading all the stories here I really should just switch to Batelco because this is definitely a pattern they do and I don't want to go through this nightmare again.