BEWARE International Data Roaming charges!!!

vodacom3g said:
Yup, especially if you travel in groups. I've run up TWO separate, huge bills because my wife keeps on calling me if we separate somewhere while traveling, she goes off in one direction and I in another.

Two local sims works perfect and you have constant comms at very low rates. Now that the kids are old enough to travel as well it adds another sim or 3 to the setup. Just think if a group of 5 SA users phone each other constantly while in the UK! :eek:
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Wouldn't like to see that bill. :eek: I guess eventually everything'll just be IP traffic and the price difference when roaming will be a lot less.

What would be a cool product is if you could somehow interface with your Vodacom number/account via SIP. Then you could just buy a prepaid sim with a local data bundle and make and receive calls without the roaming charges. Or even do it over Wifi.
 
There is something about asking for a service and then whining about how much it costs that confuses me. If you don't want to pay for roaming then don't activate it. If you do want or need it, then check the costs before you go and make sure you don't spend more than you can afford.

Should I start a thread somewhere because Standard Bank demands over R15 for every pound sterling they give me?
 
Colin62 said:
There is something about asking for a service and then whining about how much it costs that confuses me. If you don't want to pay for roaming then don't activate it. If you do want or need it, then check the costs before you go and make sure you don't spend more than you can afford.

Should I start a thread somewhere because Standard Bank demands over R15 for every pound sterling they give me?
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I couldn't agree more :)
 
Errr.. but still.... why does it cost R140 a meg anyway???? its not like her GPRS connection had to dial home route all traffic via SA.

If anything China isp should have said, well here in china 1MB costs 0.001cents for us, lets add 0.002 cents ontop of that for profit and send that to our roaming partner.
 
I think there have been enough warning messages out now that the average business traveller should be well aware that roaming charges can be excessively high. The days of claiming ignorance are soon coming to an end. And to Vodacom it is an either/or scenario. They agree to accept all roaming charges en masse. Or they must simply disallow roaming completely. There are also jewelers in China who will charge you exorbitant fees for diamonds and gold. Should SAA stop flying to China because of that? Come on people, take some responsibility for your failure to sufficiently prepare for your journey. When you stay at a hotel in China you will want to know how much they charge for a night. Well then, do the same with your data charges.
 
In this specific case, Vodacom wasn't wrong and should be defended accordingly.

Roaming costs a fortune, and even my technologically challenged parents figured it out before going abroad. My old fogies as a first thing upon arrival, bought prepaid SIM cards for their phones and were in touch with my brother in minutes. They still have the SIM cards, with credit loaded on them as the costs were astronomically cheap compared to here.
 
Reading this thread, it sounds like the problem wasn't that the user didn't know the charges were high. They knew, they used it anyway, they got the bill, they're prepared to pay.

I think what's being questioned is: why are data roaming rates so high?
 
CathJ said:
Reading this thread, it sounds like the problem wasn't that the user didn't know the charges were high. They knew, they used it anyway, they got the bill, they're prepared to pay.

I think what's being questioned is: why are data roaming rates so high?
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And why even offer anything that costs close to R140 per mb? You can use that up on a bad day just logging on and off! Problem is some folk don't even know the difference between a megabyte and a gigabyte...
 
Yotch said:
The 3 network currently offers free roaming across their international networks - I think this includes prepaid data customers. It's hard to see how the other networks can be allowed to charge R140 000 per gigabyte for the same service without government intervention.
http://mobilesociety.typepad.com/mobile_life/2007/01/free_data_roami.html
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39285487,00.htm
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The key is across their networks, Vodafone also offers reduced rates on their networks, not as cheap as 3 though, but if its not your network there's not much you can do.
 
CathJ said:
Reading this thread, it sounds like the problem wasn't that the user didn't know the charges were high. They knew, they used it anyway, they got the bill, they're prepared to pay.

I think what's being questioned is: why are data roaming rates so high?
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omg...someone that actually read my post without jumping to flame, thanks!
 
onebrickshort said:
Then again, look at those who fly economy class and pay 1/5 of those who fly Business Class to the same place in the same metal tube. Same logic.
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yes but the people who fly 1st class arrive there sooner! :p :D
 
Keeper said:
yes but the people who fly 1st class arrive there sooner! :p :D
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Lol!
Let me tell you... once you've flown once a month on 10 hour flights and tried it business class, you'll soon realise the airlines are in fact charging very little for those seats :p
 
vodacom3g said:
But it's expensive, so Vodacom does not make it available to everyone by default. You have to phone up and ask for it.

...

Not trying to insinuate in any way your girlfriend is ignorant, but she actively subscribed to a service and must / should have checked the costs of the service before using it. I.e. it was not something that got added to her contract without her consent.
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Sorry to bump a 6 month old thread, but I want to question this point, v3g, which you made in several posts.

For Vodacom contract customers (I only have prepaid, and MTN contract), do you separately sign up for international roaming data as opposed to voice and SMS? Because if not, your argument is very weak: people sign up for international roaming because they need voice and SMS. They may not be told the costs of data (on MTN, they definitely are not! It takes a long time to find out the costs for data from MTN!).
 
Anyone been to Russia? Roaming on 3G? They have a SP there charging R1500/MB!!!:eek::eek::eek::eek:

So yep beware.:)
 
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