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albert

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I hope someone can help me.

I went to Botswana for the weekend of the 24th September.

On Friday 23 September just after I paid R 46 to the tollgate on the N4 before Zeerust I received a call but my phone's battery was flat and the phone switched off. The phone remained switched off untill I got back to Centurion on Sunday afternoon at about 14:00 when I charged and subsequently switched the phone back on.

When looking at my cellphone bill I have been charged in the region of R 100 for roaming in Botswana - all calls was made to voicemail according to the statement.

The helpdesk told me I should have switched on unconditional divert or something like that which will send calls straight to voicemail and not to my phone and back to voicemail.

My questions:
1) I now want to know how did Vodacom know I'm in Botswana when the phone was switched off?
2) Is there someone I can contact (apart from the helpdesk) who will be able to assist (and possibly refund me) in this matter?

Then on a different note, can someone tell me why Vodacom Service Provider decided that they need to close down the interface on vodacomsp.co.za and move it to vodacom4me.co.za? The vodacomsp.co.za interface was slow but it worked. The vodacom4me version tells me I do not have a GPRS bundle in the balances view (which is correct as I took out a seperate 500MB 3G contract) but in the contract details section it shows that I have a 200MB GPRS bundle.

Albert
 
Clever, these systems :)

The only way the system could have known you're in Botswana was if your phone was active on the foreign network and did a location update there. Are you sure you did not put your sim in another phone or maybe tried to turn it on at some point?

Your best bet to resolve this is to call 155. They have the ability to look at all your records and can take the needed steps.

Or else, PM me with all your details and I'll put you in direct contact with one of the senior guys.
 
What happened here is your phone automatically selected the Botswana network prior to receiving the call. When you phone's battery ran out the attached 'flag' in the VLR which is an indicator of whether your phone is on or not was not updated to indicate that your phone was now off (it is the repsonsibility of phone to update the flag when you switch the phone off - switch the phone off next to a speaker and you will hear it transmit).

So when you receive a call the HLR will ask the VLR if you are attached (and you are now still marked as attached) and route the calls to the VLR. As you will not respond to paging (search by the network for phone attached to radio netork) your divert will send the call back to RSA.

After a couple of hours the VLR normally checks all phones if they are infact still attached (type of audit) and will update you status and the HLR will send calls directly to voicemail without routing them to Botswana.
 
When going to Botswana (or leaving Botswana) I noticed that I'm already on the Botswana network around 20km before going through the border/after leaving Botswana.

It seems as if the phone/Vodacom is extremely keen to have me pay roaming rates...
 
good thing I'm in Cape Town .... knowhere near Botswanna :D
 
vodacom3g,

You should get your international roaming department to contact the Botswana network to attempt to reduce coverage in RSA (it is illegal) although this may prove impossible if the Vodacom signal is weak near the border due to no town with Vodacom site near the border but there is a Botswana town at the border as is the case in Vioolsdrift on the Namibian border. I was also in the RSA paying international rates.

If you find yourself in this situation you can always cancel diverts ##002# (or via menu) even if you are already in the foreign network. Call forwarding whilst roaming is not a good option i.e. it is an expensive. If you have a smartphone run a voicemail app on the phone. You can then also retrieve messages for free.
 
Edinetz said:
vodacom3g,

You should get your international roaming department to contact the Botswana network to attempt to reduce coverage in RSA (it is illegal) although this may prove impossible if the Vodacom signal is weak near the border due to no town with Vodacom site near the border but there is a Botswana town at the border as is the case in Vioolsdrift on the Namibian border. I was also in the RSA paying international rates.
Click to expand...

For a while, while in Ponto do Ouro in Mozambique, I was able to use my Vodacom phone. Recently, when I visited again, the Vodacom SA signal was weak to non-existent there and my phone roamed on the MCell network. When I queried this on my return to SA, I was told that MCell had complained about the Vodacom signal crossing the boundaries and Vodacom were instructed to adjust their site to minimise cross border radiation. Surely, the same can be done these cases (Botswana and Namibia)?
 
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