titanium
09-08-2005, 09:38 AM
When MTN announced that they were going to drop prices for GPRS from R25/mb to R2/mb commencing from the 11th April, I was really looking forwards to this as I previously had the 2mb GPRS bundle for about R50/month. I received a SMS from MTN a few days before the 11th April informing me that the new billing scheme would take place automatically, and there was no need for user intervention on my part (i.e. my 2mb GPRS bundle would fall away and be replaced by a flat rate of R2/mb). So from the 11th April, I started using GPRS more regularly (mainling for ICQing from my cell).
Well, to cut a long story short:
1. Nashua (my service provider) continued to bill me at 20kb increments at R25/mb.
2. After complaining to them and escalating the issue to Nashua and MTN, they continued to bill me at the incorrect old rate for the next 3 months.
3. Finally, in July, my bill reflected a per byte GPRS counter, i.e. instead of 20kb increments, it showed how many bytes I actually used. However, they still billed me at R25/mb instead of R2/mb.
My GPRS usage is pretty small - about 20mb per month cumulative, according to my Sony Ericsson P900 GPRS counter. So - instead of paying R40/month for GPRS usage, MTN is charging me R500.
I am still sorting out this mess with MTN / Nashua, who have been very lax and unhelpful, and they have come up with all sorts of excuses, such as claiming that they had to find out from the Data Billing department whether using GPRS from my laptop would incur a higher cost than using GPRS from my phone!?! (the answer was no, GPRS costs are uniform regardless of what you use it for - I could have told them that!) I'm hoping to get a final resolution to this issue on Thursday and get a refund for the overbilling - failing which, I'll have to rock the boat a lot more.
So - I don't think I can be the only one experiencing GPRS billing woes. A friend of mine is with M-Tel and they have billed him correctly for his GPRS usage. If you use GPRS, have you checked your billing, and is it correct? To recap - billing should be done at R2 / mb, on a per byte basis, not at R25/mb in 20 kb increments.
Cheers
Well, to cut a long story short:
1. Nashua (my service provider) continued to bill me at 20kb increments at R25/mb.
2. After complaining to them and escalating the issue to Nashua and MTN, they continued to bill me at the incorrect old rate for the next 3 months.
3. Finally, in July, my bill reflected a per byte GPRS counter, i.e. instead of 20kb increments, it showed how many bytes I actually used. However, they still billed me at R25/mb instead of R2/mb.
My GPRS usage is pretty small - about 20mb per month cumulative, according to my Sony Ericsson P900 GPRS counter. So - instead of paying R40/month for GPRS usage, MTN is charging me R500.
I am still sorting out this mess with MTN / Nashua, who have been very lax and unhelpful, and they have come up with all sorts of excuses, such as claiming that they had to find out from the Data Billing department whether using GPRS from my laptop would incur a higher cost than using GPRS from my phone!?! (the answer was no, GPRS costs are uniform regardless of what you use it for - I could have told them that!) I'm hoping to get a final resolution to this issue on Thursday and get a refund for the overbilling - failing which, I'll have to rock the boat a lot more.
So - I don't think I can be the only one experiencing GPRS billing woes. A friend of mine is with M-Tel and they have billed him correctly for his GPRS usage. If you use GPRS, have you checked your billing, and is it correct? To recap - billing should be done at R2 / mb, on a per byte basis, not at R25/mb in 20 kb increments.
Cheers