MTN 24h Uncapped Data Bundle Scam

H

hk1979

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My wife is currently very furious! She bought this 24 hour data bundle during August. She received an SMS that she had purchased it. We then downloaded some stuff non stop. Speed was terrible, but we tried to get as much value from the 24 hours as possible. The billing department contacted her later, saying there was some large amounts from her account. She told them what happened, and they said that when she gets the invoice, she must go to branch. She got her invoice, went to branch, and all went downhill from there.

The interesting part comes that MTN claim she never activated her bundle, and then insisted that she pays the bill now on her account!!! Her account rarely been higher than 1K, and over a 24 hour period they charged her more than R6000!!! Hectic, 8ta only charges you R199 for 10 Gigs, and she didn't even use close to 5 gigs that day.

But here comes the worse part. Usually these companies will sort out your issues if you log a ticket at the call centre and share your story. But not MTN. It's more than a month later, and they show absolute no remorse for their clients. They just blamed her for not reading the SMS properly, saying the same SMS says she must activate the bundle. But my wife showed me the SMS, and there are no mention of activation at all! Check how MTN blatantly lied on Hello Peter:

http://www.hellopeter.com/mtn/complaints/24-hour-data-bundle-loyalty-points-644574
http://www.hellopeter.com/mtn/complaints/loyalty-points-used-for-bundle-but-charged-647017

Upon futher investigation I found other people to have same issue, note they also say no mention of activation SMS:

http://www.hellopeter.com/mtn/complaints/data-bundle-not-applied-as-per-contract-650109
http://www.hellopeter.com/mtn/complaints/unnecessary-deduction-in-airtime-649698

MTN please take care of you subscribers. Luckily I'm with Vodacom, much greater customer service and faster response.
 
I also bought one a about 2 months ago. After I received the SMS saying thats it activated it was still using my airtime for about 30mins. Also, I managed to use about 200mb on the computer as a modem, and thats besides the amount of youtube and radio streaming I did in the car before I got the SMS saying that I`ve hit my 150mb fair usage and will be throttled to 10kb/s speeds.

Seems like their uncapped is still very buggy...
 
Buggy we can handle. What we can't handle is:

- Customer Care that is lying in public to make consumer look incompetent
- Making consumer pay for flaws in their system
 
Sorry to hear about your wife's problem. Some people had to sell their vehicles to settle the bill. Count your self lucky. +1 MTN . . . -1 Customer Lesson learned.
 
Well maybe she will have to sell her vehicle if MTN doesn't wake up. We don't just have 6K in case of telecom emergency.
 
Another reason why I love my 10GB 8ta deal. When the 10GB is up, it points you to a landing page where you can top-up.

Just too risky with MTN. Their billing system is still a mess, as I'm still billed two months in advance. WTF?
 
This is the #1 reason why I won't use a contract SIM to download huge quantities of data.

I'll use a prepaid SIM rather.

Good luck, hope you can get sorted out in your favour.
 
just some feedback, it seems like it will get sorted out by means of a credit note on her account. the joys of public outcry paid off.. it still was lots of hassle to go through... all the admin and keeping track of amounts
 
Surely someone must have contested the fact of these large data bills in court? I don't see how it can be legal to allow a subscriber to rack up such huge amounts, especially as it's technically a credit extension. I was told before that you were only allowed to run up a bill 3 x your contract amount per month, has this changed?

Surely it must be against the NCA and CPA.
 
Kosmik said:
Surely someone must have contested the fact of these large data bills in court? I don't see how it can be legal to allow a subscriber to rack up such huge amounts, especially as it's technically a credit extension. I was told before that you were only allowed to run up a bill 3 x your contract amount per month, has this changed?

Surely it must be against the NCA and CPA.
Click to expand...

I think it is, ADSL went down recently (fckn Afrihost) and i had been using my cell c 3G quite a lot, they actually informed me and asked if i would like to be capped.
 
The MTN 24 hr uncapped bundle is miss representation in my opinion.

According to MTN's fair use policy (Which you have to dig for in their legal stuff, not even the call operator could find it!) it is said that the limit 150mb. So in effect you pay R40 for 150mb, after which they throttle the speed to between 0.05 Mbs and 0.1 Mbs
https://www.mtn.co.za/pages/website_legal.aspx?termsid=384

If you are prepared to download torrents for the full 24 hr period you can expect to rack up around 5 GB, ironic as I was under the impression that FUP was supposed to curb torrent downloads. So in short for people like me who want to use it within reasonable limits 4mbs it is not usable at all, and expensive at R40 for 150mb.

I can just imagine how much money MTN has made, by misleading people.
 
Peregrine said:
The MTN 24 hr uncapped bundle is miss representation in my opinion.

According to MTN's fair use policy (Which you have to dig for in their legal stuff, not even the call operator could find it!) it is said that the limit 150mb. So in effect you pay R40 for 150mb, after which they throttle the speed to between 0.05 Mbs and 0.1 Mbs
https://www.mtn.co.za/pages/website_legal.aspx?termsid=384

If you are prepared to download torrents for the full 24 hr period you can expect to rack up around 5 GB, ironic as I was under the impression that FUP was supposed to curb torrent downloads. So in short for people like me who want to use it within reasonable limits 4mbs it is not usable at all, and expensive at R40 for 150mb.

I can just imagine how much money MTN has made, by misleading people.
Click to expand...

That's crazy. A 500MB 7 day bundle is R45. And 1GB from midnight to 6am is R10. Much better value.
 
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