FAIL!!! Vodacom Top up contract & BIS

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freemilo

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So after much trial and error I find out that Vodacom does not allow you to use your top up airtime to subscribe to the BIS service. Their reasoning is that it's a VAS service and hence needs to be billed separately.

My Question is:

1) I am paying R315 a month for my airtime so why am I not able to use this airtime as I choose.

2) MTN & Cell C both allow their top up customers to do this.

Bottom line is, it's my airtime, how can they dictate what I can and can't do with my airtime.


How do I take this further with the new consumer act and all?


Hello Peter post - http://www.hellopeter.com/my_report_2.php?id=560092
 
What I discovered is the "TopUp" airtime is not transferable and cannot be used as credits except for your normal calls and data bundles. Cannot even buy an SMS bundles (only MMS but who still uses those?).

Big FAIL!!!!!

My wife wants BlackBerry and her contract is up for renewal soon so unless BIS is included in her TopUp contract, going to move to another network.
 
I was so Angry on Friday when I found out this crap, I specifically went out and bought a brand new BB9300 with the intention to take advantage of the BIS service. (My mother is on Cell C top-up and is using BIS so I assumed it would work on Vodacom, I had no reason to believe it wouldn't) Without BIS, the Black Berry isn't that usefull to me. I'd much rather get a Android phone now.

Anyone looking to buy my 9300, it's 4 days old (got receipt). Retails at Vodacom for R3500, will accept R3000. Also willing to swop for HTC Desire
 
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freemilo said:
So after much trial and error I find out that Vodacom does not allow you to use your top up airtime to subscribe to the BIS service. Their reasoning is that it's a VAS service and hence needs to be billed separately.

My Question is:

1) I am paying R315 a month for my airtime so why am I not able to use this airtime as I choose.

2) MTN & Cell C both allow their top up customers to do this.

Bottom line is, it's my airtime, how can they dictate what I can and can't do with my airtime.


How do I take this further with the new consumer act and all?


Hello Peter post - http://www.hellopeter.com/my_report_2.php?id=560092
Click to expand...

Neither MTN nor Cell C allows you to subscribe to BIS with included airtime.
 
@ Oronte, like I said, my mother has a CellC top-up and she is able to subscribe to the BIS service with her included airtime (This is FACT). A friend of mine told me last night that she subscribes to BIS on MTN top-up (I will follow up to confirm this today)
 
Glad I saw this thread, a friend was thinking of getting a berry torch on voda topup 315s upgrade in May, I guess rather downgrade the topup to 200/275 to make up for the BIS fee!
 
Trix said:
Glad I saw this thread, a friend was thinking of getting a berry torch on voda topup 315s upgrade in May, I guess rather downgrade the topup to 200/275 to make up for the BIS fee!
Click to expand...

Wrong Post
 
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I am afriad Mr freemilo has being given false information, i emailed both MTN and CellC and both have responded to say that BIS cannot be activated using allocated airtime on a "Topup" based package and has to be activated by them as a VAS, ie an additional charge on the account.

The fact that Vodacom is also doing is not then such a major fail, i completely agree it is our airtime and they should not be allowed ot dictate what we do with it, but then again we live in a country were telkom exists so what are we really going to do about it.

Lets stop targeting vodacom, at least on this specific issue, the 1 wont do it unless the other does and the other wont until the 1 does, so its s imply matter of they are not so why should we.
Its money guys, i personally seldom use my R315 airtime, but i sure as hell aint going to start throwing my toys out of my cot of R60, especially when i get far more than my R60 worth of internet data transfering at the least 1Gb per month via my handset, so for R59 i really dont care if its included or excluded from my artime as long as they dont start docking my airtime for transfering so much data.
 
I'm with vodacom so I can't speak against the other networks. I was also hugely disappointed with this. Come on vodacom, make a change. Lets see how much you truly value your customers.
 
my android screen cracked so pulled out my back up blackberry and same just happened to me epic fail!!!

Top up 315
 
CranialBlaze said:
....
Its money guys, i personally seldom use my R315 airtime, but i sure as hell aint going to start throwing my toys out of my cot of R60, especially when i get far more than my R60 worth of internet data transfering at the least 1Gb per month via my handset, so for R59 i really dont care if its included or excluded from my artime as long as they dont start docking my airtime for transfering so much data.
Click to expand...

Well most of us do give a damn. Anyway, whats the value of saying I can do 1Gb per month on my Blackberry when its only browsing - different story if I could use it for DUN on my PC.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
Well most of us do give a damn. Anyway, whats the value of saying I can do 1Gb per month on my Blackberry when its only browsing - different story if I could use it for DUN on my PC.
Click to expand...

Not browsing, that's mostly downloading, download larger files that I need quickly or simply don't wanna pause my other downloads for, last month my phone was in for repairs from the 4th to the 22nd and I still got over 1.7gb out of my BIS, if you really wanted to use it on your pc you can get web proxy for about R50 and turn your phone into a proxy server provided you have a wifi router or access point in your house.

I use my phone for most of my bigger http capable download, windows sp1 was w of then, nvidia drivers, browser updates, software patches. If its on http I can and often do download it, if not then why not.

Neither vodacom, mtn or cell allow you to purchase bis off your alloted airtime so why everyone wants to throw stones at voda only I don't know.
 
CranialBlaze said:
Not browsing, that's mostly downloading, download larger files that I need quickly or simply don't wanna pause my other downloads for, last month my phone was in for repairs from the 4th to the 22nd and I still got over 1.7gb out of my BIS, if you really wanted to use it on your pc you can get web proxy for about R50 and turn your phone into a proxy server provided you have a wifi router or access point in your house.

I use my phone for most of my bigger http capable download, windows sp1 was w of then, nvidia drivers, browser updates, software patches. If its on http I can and often do download it, if not then why not.

Neither vodacom, mtn or cell allow you to purchase bis off your alloted airtime so why everyone wants to throw stones at voda only I don't know.
Click to expand...

Interesting you mention this as I understood that BIS will automatically detect when your not browsing on your phone. I was also under the impression that even on a BB you could not download for free.
 
cbrunsdonza said:
Interesting you mention this as I understood that BIS will automatically detect when your not browsing on your phone. I was also under the impression that even on a BB you could not download for free.
Click to expand...

The app is not creating a dial up connection, that's the detection point, turns your phone into proxy so the phone processes all the trafic while the output is displayed on your PC, you will need to configure your browser to use the proxy ip and not your active internet, to the best of my knowledge there is no way to set a proxy global for the entire PC so you would be limited pretty much to browsing and downloading withing the browser without a 3rd party download manager. Its a little back door someone created, quite smart really but does require some pre-existing hardware to be in place and has limitations, like https for example wont work so facebooks out.

As for downloading, that is true for OS5, although recently some lucky users have noticed that even on OS5 the file size limitation has been removed. As of OS6 however the file size limit of 2.9mb was changed to unlimited as in this day and age that size limit is quite ridiculous, i have word documents larger than that. Personally i have tested the file size limit to 990mb for a single file which i successfully downloaded using my 3G. Basically any OS6 device and the odd OS5 have no file size limits so using 3G you can pretty much go mad until the provides catch on.

I must say i would be greatly impressed to see someone surpass 1GB with just browsing and email, until OS6 i was peaking around 200mb and an extreme month.
 
I got a response from Vodacom regarding this matter and they told me that the reason they cannot deduct the BIS VAS from my top-up airtime is because of their billing system. My understanding of the conversation with them was that the VAS and voice run through different "modules" and that these two couldn't communicate with each other automatically (or something like that)

Re. CellC BIS Topup- I setup the BIS on my mothers phone (maybe it's not supposed to work) not sure why it did.
 
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