Legal action?

The extent to which they had earnt or spent any money was most probably limited just to pocket money. Knaagdier's brother might have worked out how to top up with bandwidth but was R35000 any different in his mind to his R3.50/week pocket money? True understanding of money only comes with age and experience. Just knowing which buttons to press on a computer does not mean you understand the consequences of such seemingly innocuous keystrokes.
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dude they were buying selling stuff to make money... they knew how to manipulate and MAKE money at that age. Then again they are two years ahead at school... :o
 
fishfly said:
dude they were buying selling stuff to make money... they knew how to manipulate and MAKE money at that age. Then again they are two years ahead at school... :o
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I also used to buy and sell at a very young age. But looking back at that time, I now know that I knew my way around a lot of things at an early age but understood very little of them until much later. What did I really understand about right and wrong? I got so many beatings with a cane at junior boarding school that the punishments became meaningless. I simply thought that this is what adults do to kids and I just intensified my efforts not to get caught. Why did these adults force me to learn those stupid subjects at school? Nothing made much sense to me until I reached different levels of maturity. As I developed and began understanding life a little, many things fell into place for me. The transition from child to adolescence and then to adulthood, is a confusing time for many kids. My own experiences as a kid make me less inclined to jump to any hard and fast conclusions that Knaagdier's brother should have known better. I could easily have turned into a bitter adult if my parents hadn't understood how little I understood about their world, when I was a child.
 
Ozymandias said:
I also used to buy and sell at a very young age. But looking back at that time, I now know that I knew my way around a lot of things at an early age but understood very little of them until much later. What did I really understand about right and wrong? I got so many beatings with a cane at junior boarding school that the punishments became meaningless. I simply thought that this is what adults do to kids and I just intensified my efforts not to get caught. Why did these adults force me to learn those stupid subjects at school? Nothing made much sense to me until I reached different levels of maturity. As I developed and began understanding life a little, many things fell into place for me. The transition from child to adolescence and then to adulthood, is a confusing time for many kids. My own experiences as a kid make me less inclined to jump to any hard and fast conclusions that Knaagdier's brother should have known better. I could easily have turned into a bitter adult if my parents hadn't understood how little I understood about their world, when I was a child.
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True, but I still say 10 years old is more than old enough to know what he was doing. I mean, R35 000 of bandwidth?!? Did he want to download the whole frikkin internet? :confused:
 
Kaiser said:
True, but I still say 10 years old is more than old enough to know what he was doing. I mean, R35 000 of bandwidth?!? Did he want to download the whole frikkin internet? :confused:
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Your parents must be very lucky, to have a child that never did anything stupid, tell them I say congratulations.....:rolleyes:
 
Seriously sorry to hear about your misfortune man.

I actually had the same happen in my immediate family.

My brother in-law (age17 at that stage) visited us for the holidays over a December a few years ago, got used to the soft capped situation of iburst, went back home and continued his habits on his mothers' vodacom 3g package of 350mb's :S

Vodacom also did not send a notification of excessive usage over the data limit, and sent a nice little bill of +-16k. Fortunately/unfortunately my in-laws had the money and on the next debit order run....well....bye-bye R16000!

I would honestly not know what to do in a situation like that, even if I had the money I would still see if there is not some sort of agreement you can reach with iburst. Some advise I can give you;
* Contact them and state your case/reach agreement BEFORE legal action starts,
* Contact the Consumer Watch people asap,
* Find out if your insurance offers free legal advise,
* and lastly....speak to your parents. I know you might be a little scared of what might happen, but family is there for a reason, to help one another through tough times.

Keep us posted, I would actually like to know what happens.
 
MagicDude4Eva said:
It is true what was said above. The NCA guards consumers and although I am no expert, I recall that each customer can only be sold products and services for which he was credit-vetted.

I found it also bizarre that iBurst allows you to top-up for that amount - I somehow don't honestly believe the story above. I had a similar situation where I wanted to top-up via account and iBurst restricted me to top-up beyond 9GB. I then had to top-up via credit card.

I don't want to negate your story, but:
- iBurst (at least used to) block account top-ups over 9GB
- You would then have to top-up via credit-card (in which case your bank's fraud-department should have contacted you after some time)
- R 35,000 equates to about 160GB of bandwidth - how on earth are you able to download this amount in a month unnoticed?
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I agree, here's a copy of what's on the bottom of my usage page :

Bandwidth bought on your account is limited to 2GIG (FreeFlo, Kickstart, Playa) or 9GIG (Giga, Pro, Xtreme, Addict package)
Good news! If you don’t use all the data that you've just bought this month, we will carry it over for you to the next month.
Please use your credit card to recharge if you’ve reached your limit!
The Booster amount you have selected will only reflect after 15 minutes
 
fishfly said:
My gf's cousins knew all about money from the age of 6... so I seriously doubt you can say a kid at age 10 doesn't know about the adult world..
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Children of that age may know about the 'adult' world but they are deemed to not be capable of understanding the consequences of their actions.
 
It just how ridiculous expensive bandwith is in SA.

With R35000 you can have a vacation in Japan buy a 1TB harddrive full it up and it will prob cost you less!
 
LOL bandwith is so expensive here its actually cheaper to buy a TV series than to download it!
 
cryptic1 said:
I agree, here's a copy of what's on the bottom of my usage page :

Bandwidth bought on your account is limited to 2GIG (FreeFlo, Kickstart, Playa) or 9GIG (Giga, Pro, Xtreme, Addict package)
Good news! If you don’t use all the data that you've just bought this month, we will carry it over for you to the next month.
Please use your credit card to recharge if you’ve reached your limit!
The Booster amount you have selected will only reflect after 15 minutes
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I was just looking at that now, when recharging a director here's home iburst account, whos usage has gone in high gear this month.
Somehow their up and download has gone a bit crazy, they on 9Gb already this month. No more softcap, throttled surfing, complete stop, so gotta keep adding BW. I'm thinking one of the kids have not been careful with shutting down file sharing... could it be bandwidth hijacking?
So my understanding is that u shouldnt be able to purchase more than 9Gb extra on your account.... so ... how was he able to add so much onto the acc?
Is it just a "notice", but not hardcoded into the website, that u canNOT get more after the 9Gb limit, so it is actually possible?
Umh... I guess it clearly IS possible.

At least dear brother didnt go for the pay-per-use option... at R1/Mb
Eish, best is to keep family the hell away from internet a/c... my wife also once had brainchild to scan some photos and e-mail, without reducing filesizes :(
Gotta watch them with hawk eye
 
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It just how ridiculous expensive bandwith is in SA.

With R35000 you can have a vacation in Japan buy a 1TB harddrive full it up and it will prob cost you less!
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you mean HK :P

Children of that age may know about the 'adult' world but they are deemed to not be capable of understanding the consequences of their actions.
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they know not to run up 35k worth of inet bill on p0rn :P
 
reading this thread has given me little mini heart attacks, R35k thats insane!!! stick with adsl and never have this problem plus never let youngsters near your pc or internet, makes me wanna go home and just check that its all switched off and disconnected :P
 
@ Knaagdier....what happened with regards to this?

Then again....he's not gonna see this if he's in jail :(
 
I think we need to tell FHM about this, I think Knaagdier needs the "Buy this man a beer award"
 
88RSI said:
LOL bandwith is so expensive here its actually cheaper to buy a TV series than to download it!
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Maybe this is part of a huge conspiracy against software/music/movies/series/etc piracy.:D

Though bandwidth prices are rediculously high.
 
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