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Veroland

Executive Member
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Hi

I noticed this morning that vadacom4me now have adds on the actual sms send and the confirmation screen thus forcing the user to have to scroll down the page to be able to see the send dialogs or the confirmation.

Is it just me or is it getting a bit much! I know it's a free service and we can not really moan too much.

Vero
 
The free 20 SMS's offer was designed to get normal, active Vodacom subscribers to use v4me more to do self-management of their accounts.

But what happens is that people buy SIMs (cheaper than what it costs the network to actually provision it on the network) and then only use the free SMS feature.

And there are a LOT of these people. So this results in a substantial revenue loss.

So, I guess this is an attempt to recover some of the lost revenue.
 
That makes sense, I know a lot of people buy sims, pay only the minimum amout needed to keep the number active and only use the phone to receive calls and the famous "please call me".
 
Perhaps a minimum monthly spend to get the free SMS service, even if its R50?
What "normal, active" cell phone user doesn't spend that anyway?
 
vodacom3g said:
I just sent myself an SMS and did not get an add. do you see it in the received SMS?
Click to expand...

I was getting big adds on the website itself this morning, that is what I was referring to, the box where you enter your sms was not even on the screen, I had to scroll way down to get to it
 
I know some folks will complain, thing is, the site and the service suffers because of abuse. Remove the abusers, and the service quality improves for everyone!
 
you should try using adblock plus in your mozilla firefox browser. It does wonders for saving bandwith consumption.

Btw It would be really stupid to force people to spend money before allowing them to send free vodacon to vodacon sms'. And by visiting the website you've alreaddy spent 1rand data charges by loading all the crap they host on there.
 
Veroland said:
I was getting big adds on the website itself this morning, that is what I was referring to, the box where you enter your sms was not even on the screen, I had to scroll way down to get to it
Click to expand...

Oh, OK...completely misread your post. Thought you meant ads in the actual SMS.

There's always been ads in the web pages. Are they just bigger now?

I see I don't get them at all at the moment, just a broken pic box. Someone probably broke something.....
 
Tweak said:
And by visiting the website you've alreaddy spent 1rand data charges by loading all the crap they host on there.
Click to expand...

You just answered your own complaint, normal users are spending the minimum amount of money anyway. I can assure you, the abusers are not using a cell connection to get to the site. ie its costing nowhere near R1.00 to get there.

I've just had a look, I can see the recently added ad dumped in between the normal "Send SMS" link and the actual page, but nothing extra. :confused:
 
Veroland said:
That makes sense, I know a lot of people buy sims, pay only the minimum amout needed to keep the number active and only use the phone to receive calls and the famous "please call me".
Click to expand...

But that's not a problem - sure, VC isn't making money off them, but they're not spending money on them either. The people making the calls are still paying.

Now if they're doing it to use the free SMSs, like V3G said, then I understand the problem. But not if they're just using their phone to receive calls only.
 
vodacom3g said:
Oh, OK...completely misread your post. Thought you meant ads in the actual SMS.

There's always been ads in the web pages. Are they just bigger now?

I see I don't get them at all at the moment, just a broken pic box. Someone probably broke something.....
Click to expand...

The adds seem to be back to normal banner size now, was as big as the ones you get in the screen before you type in the sms this morning
 
carudden said:
You just answered your own complaint, normal users are spending the minimum amount of money anyway. I can assure you, the abusers are not using a cell connection to get to the site. ie its costing nowhere near R1.00 to get there.

I've just had a look, I can see the recently added ad dumped in between the normal "Send SMS" link and the actual page, but nothing extra. :confused:
Click to expand...

Yup, typical users will use home / work internet connections for this.

Even had a number of spammers using this feature via automatic login. Thus the introduction of CAPTCHA.

Really, really annoying when normal people get inconvenienced by others who abuse systems for their own gain. :mad:
 
vodacom3g said:
Even had a number of spammers using this feature via automatic login. Thus the introduction of CAPTCHA.
Click to expand...

I was looking forward to seeing the newly introduced "login features", I was obviously not flagged as a violator [-]un[/-]lucky me.
 
vodacom3g said:
We're trying to strike a balance between catching these idiots and not annoying everyone all the time.....
Click to expand...

Thanks for that. Otherwise my iMacros script I use to check my balances in v4me would be a thing of the past.
 
Why don't you do this.

Vodacom4me login page, user enters number and password

if user is contract then login , if user is prepaid then enter captcha page shows
 
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