Vodacom BIS not registering/working - support is not answering.

[AniV]

Hi everyone,

I have a BB Torch, prepaid on Vodacom. I buy my BIS monthly using the *111# menu.
Last night my BIS expired for the month, so this morning I put airtime on my phone and purchased another month of BIS.

Having done this many times before, I know that a reboot is usually required to activate the BIS properly.
I rebooted, but nothing happened. My BIS did not activate. I did not receive the activation or confirmation SMS's that Vodacom usually send.

This was at 11am.
I have since rebooted the phone at least 6 times, 4 of which were full battery-pull reboots.
That did nothing either. When I check my airtime balance and my Blackberry service status I can see that the airtime did indeed get taken off, and my BIS is supposedly active and valid till 13 March.

I have called the Vodacom Support Line twice. Both times I was simply on hold for a good 25minutes before I gave up out of sheer frustration. Still no BIS. I cannot believe that the helpline is so busy on a Sunday afternoon that I would have to be put on hold for so long. That leads me to believe that there simply were no consultants on duty to assist me. This is ridiculous.

I was planning to move to 8ta this month because I am gatvol of Vodacom and their BB nonsense. They promised to investigate the "stolen airtime" issue with Foursquare and rectify their previous pathetic support. I even relinquished my cellphone over to Vodacom's Engineers for a day to test it themselves and see how my money was being sucked away despite having BIS. They saw the issue and said they would have to enter into discussions with RIM and Foursquare to get further clarity on what was causing the problem.

For that reason I decided to relent and give them another chance instead of moving to 8ta.

I am not a happy camper right now.

[AniV]

Finally got the sms's, rebooted, and am back on the air and working, but grrrrrrrr.

Still pretty miffed. I'm giving Vodacom this final month to sort out all my issues.
Come 13 March and I still have issues, I'm making the jump and Vodacom will never see me again.
Meh.

[Lounger]

Send a message everyone can see, like on Twitter or Hello Peter. They can't ignore that.

[RichardG]

I never keep airtime on my BIS phone cos this is a common accurance - when you switch on your phone you will notice your phone doesn't show the BIS symbol immediately takes time and during that time "Networks" deduct small little amounts of "cents" and if BIS goes down then you are using standard "APN" which vodacom start deducting airtime. I have noticed this happening on FourSquare, UberSocial apps - perhaps Vodacom have changed their BIS policy settings or they've to put this in place to stop abusers. Who knows.

P.S every 2 weeks Vodacom does send out an sms reminding you that BIS is about to expire - I always extent before the time cos I have heard numerous problems if you do it after expiry.


I hope you came right.

[gdiza]

Twitter / Facebook is a good place to post issues - don't be rude and attack the guys, just post nicely asking for help and they generally very helpful.

[AniV]

Twitter / Facebook is a good place to post issues - don't be rude and attack the guys, just post nicely asking for help and they generally very helpful.

I don't do Facebook, and Twitter is on my phone, and too short to be of any use imo.
Is it so wrong that MyBB is my first port of call for any issues I am having?

I wasn't attacking them and being rude at all. I was posting a problem I was having, in the hope that someone could assist (since they weren't) and so that if anybody else has the same problem in future hopefully this info could help them.

In this case, the problem came right by itself. The gripe was more with the fact that Support didn't answer me at all.
I felt I was being rather reasonable, given the long struggle I've had with Vodacom over the past year.