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Sign up with GoogleEarly expiry of data bundle?
- Thread starter Grubscrew
- Start date
The "60 days" actually means to a maximum of 60 days. A bundle you buy expires at the end of the next month. So if you bought on the 1st July then you would have have 60 days, whereas if you bought on the 31 July you would only have 1 month to use the data. Sucks...
up to 60 days - so depending on what date you buy bundles, it could be as little as a 1 day rollover.
have no idea why they do this...probably to irritate the customer some more, over the initial hasstle of Broadband Basic or Broadband Advanced bundle activation, various bundles (get your calculators) and OOB charging, whether it is 3G / GPRS / EDGE /HSDPA / HSUPA, 3.6 or 7.2 and who knows what other junk? (Like error 71: "Modem not warm enough" for example)
have no idea why they do this...probably to irritate the customer some more, over the initial hasstle of Broadband Basic or Broadband Advanced bundle activation, various bundles (get your calculators) and OOB charging, whether it is 3G / GPRS / EDGE /HSDPA / HSUPA, 3.6 or 7.2 and who knows what other junk? (Like error 71: "Modem not warm enough" for example)
Well if I knew that I would have obviously waited till the new month. I feel done in, doing my business in good faith and all. What is Vodacom's logic behind it if any.
Well they have irritated me plenty with this, and being a prepaid customer I will definitely look at alternatives. I could live with the disconnections, but taking my money like this leaves a sour taste.
Welcome to the club! I also learned the hard way - lost an entire bundle in one day
Anyway, thanks to members on this forum (ginggs in particular ), I learned some best practices. Find that recharging on the 1st of the month at a vodashop (just need cell no.) gives best value.here are a few tips if you want to start using 3G:
1) buy a SIM of each provider you are interested in, load a few bucks airtime or a small bundle, and test your connection speed using www.speedtest.net BEFORE signing any 2 year contracts
2) Don't sign 2 year contracts.
here are a few rules if you have decided to use Vodacom's 3G:
1) Recharge on the first of each month, thereby not getting cheated out of your 30 day "rollover"
2) Get a Bandwith Meter, that displays your upload/download limits
3) Get Ginggs' MDMA Tool to:
a) Recharge Airtime
b) Create Bundles
c) Check airtime if BW limiter is incorrect
d) check expiry date
4) If possible, recharge your phone SIM first, and send the airtime to your modem SIM - Vodacom give you no advantage for Data SIM's if we are talking about "talking points"
5) disable Windows updates, and also for any other unneeded "updating programs"
6) do not have that sim inside your modem when going abroad, so you nothing gets downloaded on "Roaming"
7) Make sure your connection is running half-stable at least, if you attempt to download anything bigger than 100mb, especially if it's from a site that does not support resuming downloads.
8) get a download resuming program for sites that do support it.
9) don't download movies, but instead buy the DVD - it's cheaper too.
10) Don't go for broadband advanced
a) no real speed increase really
b) k@k expensive
c) no real benefit unless you always fail on rules 1, 2 and 3 repeatedly
11) don't leave airtime on your data sim unattended - you might go over your bundle without knowing it (those "you have 4000kb left" sms'es only show for 3 seconds on the VMC software)
12) don't use VMC software
13) don't sms from the sms window - use the Vodacom4me website instead. (if you ignored the previous rule)
14) don't attempt to "save" your bandwidth for the last day - Vodacom is EXTREMELY slow (dunno if they throttle us so we can't finish our Bandwidth or what?)
15) don't buy 1Gb if you use 1GB a month. buy 2GB and use it for 2 months (provided you follow rule #1)
16) don't buy more than 2GB. ever. there is no benifit except for having less time to blow say, 10GB in - rather buy 5 x 2GB bundles and get 5 times the time to use it in.
17) put your modem on 3G only, if you are in range of a 3G signal. put it on GPRS if you are not...or, heck im not sure...put it on 3G, yes.
18) wave the modem around when it's downloading slow, almost like a bunny arial - it works sometimes!
19) don't use torrents, because you need to upload data on those.
20) be on-top of where you are in your cap during the month - you don't want to use it too fast because you have no "throttled" service like iburst or "free 30GB Local" service like telkom to get excited about - you get pwned by getting capped, and pay R2 per MB.
21) Only add a new bundle when the one before is almost 100% depleted - if you have 200MB left and buy a new 2GB bundle, the 2GB bundle gets used up first. use the BW Meter along with Ginggs' MDMA tool to know when to add a new bundle
22) You can pay *exactly* R389 by using your bank account if you are worried of having extra airtime that could be gobbled up in OOB unexpectedly.
hope that helps
1) buy a SIM of each provider you are interested in, load a few bucks airtime or a small bundle, and test your connection speed using www.speedtest.net BEFORE signing any 2 year contracts
2) Don't sign 2 year contracts.
here are a few rules if you have decided to use Vodacom's 3G:
1) Recharge on the first of each month, thereby not getting cheated out of your 30 day "rollover"
2) Get a Bandwith Meter, that displays your upload/download limits
3) Get Ginggs' MDMA Tool to:
a) Recharge Airtime
b) Create Bundles
c) Check airtime if BW limiter is incorrect
d) check expiry date
4) If possible, recharge your phone SIM first, and send the airtime to your modem SIM - Vodacom give you no advantage for Data SIM's if we are talking about "talking points"
5) disable Windows updates, and also for any other unneeded "updating programs"
6) do not have that sim inside your modem when going abroad, so you nothing gets downloaded on "Roaming"
7) Make sure your connection is running half-stable at least, if you attempt to download anything bigger than 100mb, especially if it's from a site that does not support resuming downloads.
8) get a download resuming program for sites that do support it.
9) don't download movies, but instead buy the DVD - it's cheaper too.
10) Don't go for broadband advanced
a) no real speed increase really
b) k@k expensive
c) no real benefit unless you always fail on rules 1, 2 and 3 repeatedly
11) don't leave airtime on your data sim unattended - you might go over your bundle without knowing it (those "you have 4000kb left" sms'es only show for 3 seconds on the VMC software)
12) don't use VMC software
13) don't sms from the sms window - use the Vodacom4me website instead. (if you ignored the previous rule)
14) don't attempt to "save" your bandwidth for the last day - Vodacom is EXTREMELY slow (dunno if they throttle us so we can't finish our Bandwidth or what?)
15) don't buy 1Gb if you use 1GB a month. buy 2GB and use it for 2 months (provided you follow rule #1)
16) don't buy more than 2GB. ever. there is no benifit except for having less time to blow say, 10GB in - rather buy 5 x 2GB bundles and get 5 times the time to use it in.
17) put your modem on 3G only, if you are in range of a 3G signal. put it on GPRS if you are not...or, heck im not sure...put it on 3G, yes.
18) wave the modem around when it's downloading slow, almost like a bunny arial - it works sometimes!
19) don't use torrents, because you need to upload data on those.
20) be on-top of where you are in your cap during the month - you don't want to use it too fast because you have no "throttled" service like iburst or "free 30GB Local" service like telkom to get excited about - you get pwned by getting capped, and pay R2 per MB.
21) Only add a new bundle when the one before is almost 100% depleted - if you have 200MB left and buy a new 2GB bundle, the 2GB bundle gets used up first. use the BW Meter along with Ginggs' MDMA tool to know when to add a new bundle
22) You can pay *exactly* R389 by using your bank account if you are worried of having extra airtime that could be gobbled up in OOB unexpectedly.
hope that helps
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2006
- Messages
- 12,151
Excellent! This should be stickied.
it doeshere are a few tips if you want to start using 3G:
hope that helps
copied and mailed to the SO.
thanks
+1
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2007
- Messages
- 10,896
Added a link to the FAQ.
Well big up to vodacom. After about 20mins holding on to be helped I hanged up and sent a query through vodacom4me. A few minutes later a rep from Vodacom phoned me (Abdul) dealt with me politely explained how this works. I explained him what my main concerns were and that I am now aware how the roll over works but I still feel cheated out of my mb's. As a sign of good faith they restored the balance of my bundle, but also explained that this would be only once off and in the future no such action would be possible.
Smiley_lauf
Expert Member
- Joined
- May 5, 2004
- Messages
- 1,872
I have also had a Vodacom rep call me and he reinstated my bundle (this was because the vodacom4me site is zero rated, but I was charged for this).
About the roll-over, I also lost out 350MB of my 500MB bundle [loaded at end of July, expired 1 Sept] because of this early expiry of the bundle. Quite upsetting.
About the roll-over, I also lost out 350MB of my 500MB bundle [loaded at end of July, expired 1 Sept] because of this early expiry of the bundle. Quite upsetting.
12) don't use VMC software
3) Get Ginggs' MDMA Tool to:
2) Get a Bandwith Meter, that displays your upload/download limits
17) put your modem on 3G only, if you are in range of a 3G signal. put it on GPRS if you are not...or, heck im not sure...put it on 3G
can anyone help me with these? It would be much appreciated
3) Get Ginggs' MDMA Tool to:
2) Get a Bandwith Meter, that displays your upload/download limits
17) put your modem on 3G only, if you are in range of a 3G signal. put it on GPRS if you are not...or, heck im not sure...put it on 3G
can anyone help me with these? It would be much appreciated
(12) & (3) - go here:
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=59080&highlight=mdma
(2): i use Netmeter, but you can use any - most guys use something else (can't remember what though)
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Network-Tools/Bandwidth-Tools/NetMeter.shtml
(17) was kind of a joke - but if you got 3G signals, it's best to put it on a 3G-ONLY profile - not sure what to select if you don't get 3G signal...probably GPRS
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=59080&highlight=mdma
(2): i use Netmeter, but you can use any - most guys use something else (can't remember what though)
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Network-Tools/Bandwidth-Tools/NetMeter.shtml
(17) was kind of a joke - but if you got 3G signals, it's best to put it on a 3G-ONLY profile - not sure what to select if you don't get 3G signal...probably GPRS
Last edited: