Cell C Bandwidth / Data Theft

5GB gone in one day

Some woman from Cell C just phoned me saying I just went over by over R1k on my Cell C data account this month.

On checking the logs it says that I somehow managed to download 5GB yesterday!!! I downloaded absolutely nothing yesterday and it is no way it could have been a Windows Update. I rarely even hit 3GB per month!

If this is not resolved I am definitely seeking legal counsel...
 
I also had a woman phoning me that I went over my account by 5GB - and on checking the logs it said I downloaded over 5GB yesterday. And all I did was check my mails!

I rarely go over 3GB in any one month. If this is not resolved I am cancelling this contract and seeking legal counsel...
 
Hein, I think the best route to follow would be to PM the required details to the Cell_C rep.
 
I also lost 5GB in one night, but it turned out to be someone who had forgotten to disable software that backs his notebook up to a remote site.

Fortunately we figured this out before complaining to Cell C !
 
I suspect its either auto-updates, a virus, or perhaps an unsecured WiFi network?
 
Good day All

Please can every one that is having this Please PM me the following:
Full name :
Email:
data number(sim)
IMEI:
Model model:
Contact number :

Regards
~AM~
 
Hi. Is there anyone else out there still having this problem? I have experienced data theft/loss over this past weekend where a fair amount of data has just vanished. I am too frightened to top up as I am worried I will lose even more data. I have sent a PM to the cell C rep, but no reponse as yet. It would be good for Cell C to actually verify what is/could be causing this. I have conducted various scans on my PC for virusses/malware and it seems clean. At a loss, (pardon the pun), at what to do now???
 
Hi all, I'm sorry to hear everyone's having these problems but glad because I'm clearly not alone. I just got slapped with a R1k bill from Cell C because I apparently went over my 5gb cap this month and continued to spend until I hit my R1k limit. I called them to enquire about this as it is completely out of my normal usage pattern - the first time I called in the guy in the call centre emailed me a spreadsheet detailing my usage for the month and sure enough, it supported their billing. However, upon closer inspection I saw that there were some anomalies. For instance, according to their usage log I managed to download/upload 1.2gb worth of data in under a second. The report clearly shows two different sessions, a less than a minute apart, with the first session using 1.2gb! Is this phyisically possible, or is this not clear evidence that there is a serious problem with Cell-C's metering / billing system? I called the call centre again to point this out to them - after hanging on for an average of 10 minutes holding on, the guy who answered seemed at a loss for words when I pointed the discrepency out to him. He was just about to give me my reference number when I got cut off - when I call back now there is no answer. Extremely frustrating!

I'll also PM the person above to see if I can get any luck.
 
element1 said:
We should get an official response on this - cell-c? ?
Click to expand...

That would be the decent thing to do.

I am still waiting, (2 weeks later), for an explanation as to what happened to my data. The interesting thing is that it appears that this problem is not restricted to Cell C. I've seen a few posts on the Vodacom forum with similar complaints. Despite some of Cell Cs imperfections, I was planning on sticking with them - but I'm not so sure anymore. If I can't trust them to manage my data usage/allocation correctly, then what is the point?
 
I think you need to use 2 programs to monitor your data useage. I use BitMeter and also check the CellC dashboard when the modem is connected directly. In this way you will have an exact record of what you have used. I agree that it would be impossible, at the speeds that CellC provide, to d/load 1.2Gb of data in 1 second. This should take at least 12 minutes at the rate I usually get (85kb/sec). This will give you some more leverage with your enquiry with CellC
 
chrisc4290 said:
I think you need to use 2 programs to monitor your data useage. I use BitMeter and also check the CellC dashboard when the modem is connected directly. In this way you will have an exact record of what you have used. I agree that it would be impossible, at the speeds that CellC provide, to d/load 1.2Gb of data in 1 second. This should take at least 12 minutes at the rate I usually get (85kb/sec). This will give you some more leverage with your enquiry with CellC
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. Will wait and see whether a Cell C representative bothers to respond to my post. Does anyone perhaps know how I can pm the Cell C rep in the meantime? What is the correct member name (there seem to be quite a few options)?

Also, on another note, am I the only one that thinks it's wrong that Cell C does not offer a notification facility to inform you when you've reached your data cap? ADSL providers do this with no problem. I think it's a money making racket. Had I known that my cap was reached (whether accurate or not), I certainly wouldn't have continued using data to value of R1k!
 
@Acol, please PM me or email me your Cell C number at [email protected] will verify your usage, i'll let you know if there is anything out of the ordinary. -DM-
 
Update: Just spent almost an hour trying to explain my situation to the people at Cell-C's customer care. They seem to be extremely helpful but for some reason they keep putting me on hold, and then I get cut-off and it takes me ages to get through to them again, only to start at the begining of the story because they have no record of my previous calls! I don't think I've ever been so frustrated by a call centre before, and I deal with government departments all the time! I just hope they don't dare charge me for these calls as well.
 
I lost 290MB between last night and this morning. Gone and nothing recorded on the monitor.

Remaining pre-paid airtime was R17. Used that to top up with R400 for 3GB bundle. That seemed to work.

BUT my remaining bundle drops down along with my data bundle. It went from +-R14.00, to R12.50, R12.25, R12.21 to R12.15 in half an hour.

So why do I lose 290MB (expiry date 2012/01/24) and why is my remaining airtime dropping away while using normal data services?

It looks like I am losing R2 airtime per 50MB of data usage.


And what is up with the crap data rates and connections? I am losing pings to a local server. Everything is slow, but when I do speed tests it seems that the modem suddenly gets an injection of steroids and does 2mbit/s. Then slow again. This is crap, downright criminal. CellC is stealing from me.

I am now just wondering what is going to happen when the airtime reaches zero. Will my 3GB bundle disappear as well? No comms?
 
Another update - I've heard nothing from the Cell-C rep who asked me to PM them (should I be surprised), but I've been doing some investigating on my side as well as speaking at length to some of the people in Cell-C's technical department. It seems I may have overlooked the fact that we upgraded my wife's Iphone 3GS to IOS 5 with iCloud activated. This may explain some of the higher than normal usage - I've heard estimates as high as 700mb for the initial download of IOS 5 and then on top of that the backups can be huge if they include photos, music etc. Needless to say I've turned any automatic backups off. I'm still not sure whether this could account for the huge data usage I experienced but it could certainly have been a major contributor.

I've also asked CellC to put an account limit of R50 on my account to prevent me from getting surprise bills again next month - I strongly recommend anyone else with their 5GB sim and modem special do this as well as the last person I spoke to in their call centre advised that I was actually lucky that they cut me off automatically at R1000 - this is only done to prompt any queries from the client but if there aren't any queries then the next month there won't be a cap and the bill could climb much higher.

Lastly, I've figured out that the only way to stay informed about Cell-C's record of your data usage is to continuously check their website (need to register and log in). I'm going to make a point of doing this at least once a week from now on.

Hope other people can learn from this and avoid shocking bills from Cell-C in the future.
 
In January we purchased the 200gb data deal and 2 days ago, we found out via calling Cell C (which was a laborious process) that it was all finished. I cant believe it. Both my husband and I work and kid is at school. We dont stream or download movies, music etc. I cannot comprehend the fact it can be used so quickly. We used to have an uncapped ADSL line, now LTE. ON our uncapped line we never used more that 10gb a month....... how does one go about looking into this.
ps.... we are still waiting for Cell c to send the "report"!!!!!
 
dianebpro said:
In January we purchased the 200gb data deal and 2 days ago, we found out via calling Cell C (which was a laborious process) that it was all finished. I cant believe it. Both my husband and I work and kid is at school. We dont stream or download movies, music etc. I cannot comprehend the fact it can be used so quickly. We used to have an uncapped ADSL line, now LTE. ON our uncapped line we never used more that 10gb a month....... how does one go about looking into this.
ps.... we are still waiting for Cell c to send the "report"!!!!!
Click to expand...

Hi @dianebpro

Thank you for posting to us.

We'd like to apologise for the inconvenience caused to you.

Kindly PM us the Cell C number in question, contact number + email address. We will get in touch with you to assist.

^BM
 
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