Airtime transfer frustration - Vodacom

[DanieP]

On Sunday night I tried to transfer airtime to kids' phones by using my normal *111# method. Service not available. Monday the same error. Tried voice way (08212000), voice (at a price!) just said service not available! Phoned Vodacom, they said I have to phone Nashua (my contract is witg Nashua Mobile). Phoned Nashua, they said problem is with Vodacom which I knew from beginning! Grrrr! So logged call with Vodacom. I drove to local store last night to buy paper airtime for kids to load manually on their phones! Guess what! Recharge not available! Logged that too with Vodacom. So this "state of the art company does not have any means of loading airtime"! I am still waiting for feedback from them! Now my second day of frustration!

 

[Glide]

I've been experiencing the same problem. I find it very frustrating.

Solution that worked for me was to keep at the *111# method, but speed up the time taken between replying with a menu option number. I found that my full contract worked better than my wife’s prepaid contract when transferring airtime. I also found that the response time after submitting a menu option is a good gauge as to the success of failure of that particular attempt. I get a one or two second response for success anything over that and I might as well kill the call and start again.

It’s almost as if the server loses your session after say 5-10 seconds or so if you don’t reply in time. I’m not sure how the whole USSD (or whatever they call it) protocol actually works. This is just a hunch.

But on a separate note I get the feeling that the cell phone networks / towers in general are seriously overloaded with users. I find that out in Big Bay, Cape Town CBD (mountain areas), Claremont, Newlands, etc. I have very very bad signal. I have tried many different phones (iPhone, HTC magic, Nokia e90, etc.) always seems to be the same problem. Low signal. I do find however that every mall / centre I go to always has HSDPA. Could just be me or the areas I do business in, but I worry about 2010 when I am experiencing problems like this at the moment!

I love how everyone just passes you on when problems like this appear. You’re not with Vodacom your with Nashua. You’re not with Telkom your with Cybersmart…………