My R13000 Data Bill

[[OUPA]MrNutz]

never go to israel with roaming 3g - they charge R138/MB! (no R17.50 coverage)

my 1 customer came back with a lovely 38mb of usage ....R5400!

 

[vodacom3g]

Well

to say that I am not happy is the understatement of the year...

I received a data bill of R13000 - odd. Somewhere on the 19th of March, something happened: Data streamed non-stop for about 48 hours at full speed according to the traffic report.

Either my Windows machine started downloading and redownloading a corrupt file, or somebody hacked into my wireless network and downloaded a whole lot of movies - I don't know. When this started, I was under my 2GB bundle. When this stream eventually stopped, R11000 of bandwidth had been used. I know this wasn't a zombie or trojan attack because the traffic was down, not up.

After a phone call to the data helpdesk, Vodacom graciously cut the bill in half, which is still going to force me to take savings to pay for this.

Whilst I accept that I am responsible for control of traffic, what I find very disappointing is this:

No notification to me or suspension of my account. Vodacom are happy to cash in on my misfortune and I only find out when I get the bill. No SMS, nothing. Also Vodacom4me balance enquiry only shows that the bundle is used - once you're over, you have no idea how much.

So - after many satisfied years with Vodacom, I am reluctantly going to find another service provider, because I don't think I was looked after - and I think the systems need to have some checks and balances to prevent what happened to me happening to others.

Got your PM, tx.

Can you give more details on your setup. Where is the modem connected to, what software do you use to connect, how do you share the data amongst a few PC's, etc.

 

[Maelly]

Tea can do that.....

 

[AK65]

Tea can do that.....

Grrrrr.......!

 

[diabolus]

You are responsible for the usage yes , but you should learn to put in precautionery meassures as well

I disagree. There's NO "precautionary" measures you can put in yourself for something like this [not even a bandwidth meter will save you]. The operator is suppose to provide these measures and they are not providing these "measures", they're quite happy to let people ruin themselves financially. If our Banks [which everyone moans about] can proivide "precautionary" measures on all your accounts, i see no reason why Cellphone operations can't too.

Again, logic dictate that no one would intentionally download 10GB if they KNEW what the bill is gonna look like . Come on seriously...

Whilst it's nice of Vodacom to cut the bill in half, it's hiding the fact that they are not providing any form of control to the user to manage this.

Also don't bother moving , Vodacom is still by far the best in regards of transparency. MTN is 10 times worse. Vodacom at least tries to send you an SMS, MTN do NOTHING ! .

Best advice i can give anyone with this : Don't go on contract. Prepaid got more features and control than contract. Hell the MTN dash got a tab built in specifically to buy+manage your prepaid account!! But zilch for contract.

 

[AK65]

I hope you've changed the wifi security settings...?

Yes, but still some work to do. It wasn't just default settings...
I was on WEP open so I could connect via my cellphone (N95).....But I've been told that WEP can be cracked in under 99s
Will be upgrading to WPA tonight!

 

[vodacom3g]

I disagree. There's NO "precautionary" measures you can put in yourself for something like this [not even a bandwidth meter will save you]. The operator is suppose to provide these measures and they are not providing these "measures", they're quite happy to let people ruin themselves financially. If our Banks [which everyone moans about] can proivide "precautionary" measures on all your accounts, i see no reason why Cellphone operations can't too.

Again, logic dictate that no one would intentionally download 10GB if they KNEW what the bill is gonna look like . Come on seriously...

Whilst it's nice of Vodacom to cut the bill in half, it's hiding the fact that they are not providing any form of control to the user to manage this.

Also don't bother moving , Vodacom is still by far the best in regards of transparency. MTN is 10 times worse. Vodacom at least tries to send you an SMS, MTN do NOTHING ! .

Best advice i can give anyone with this : Don't go on contract. Prepaid got more features and control than contract. Hell the MTN dash got a tab built in specifically to buy+manage your prepaid account!! But zilch for contract.

There are quite a few "precautionary" measures in place, from the SMS's you receive as you work through your bundle to a hard cap you can place on your account.

I've asked to check if AK65 got the SMS's but I suspect he never saw them, using the data card in a Linux configuration.

For these cases we built the ALTNUM capability.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

It will be to all the ISP's advantage to offer a hardcapping service for free to their customers, and this should be enabled by default, so a n00b customer won't have a cap overrun when he/she try to download the latest Ubuntu/game/movie/whatever release without realizing what the financial implications will be.

Corporate customers, or those who will find a hardcap restrictive (especially towards the end of the month) may request (in writing) that the cap be lifted up - so that there will still be a hardcap, but only after a few megabytes have been used.

This still need to be sorted out between the customers and the ISP's to everybody's satisfaction.

 

[UnDeR±tAkEr]

There is a way to see this - do a detailed billing report on v4me and it will show OOB usage as well.

My advice is that you use pre-paid data bundles instead of contract data bundles.

Have to agree with this. I've been using prepaid for nearly 2 years now. No bill, no surprises, no hassles.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

If Vodacom/MTN can make PPDB's just as easy as buying airtime, then I think more people will take up that option.

But (if I am correct) the present system is a bit of a hassle - you have to buy prepaid airtime, then convert that airtime into a PPDB... if this step can be cut out, then more people will take it up.

 

[ic]

If Vodacom/MTN can make PPDB's just as easy as buying airtime, then I think more people will take up that option.

But (if I am correct) the present system is a bit of a hassle - you have to buy prepaid airtime, then convert that airtime into a PPDB... if this step can be cut out, then more people will take it up.

Not sure if I understand what you're asking for, it sounds like you're asking Vodacom to introduce a vouchers system for PPDBs, correct?

Personally, I find using Internet Banking to transfer an exact amount of airtime credit from my bank account to my SIM Card and then buying a PPDB using SMS|USSD|v4me much easier than drawing the cash & going to a petrol station to buy a voucher and then having to type in a long voucher number.

I've asked to check if AK65 got the SMS's but I suspect he never saw them, using the data card in a Linux configuration.

The unofficial Linux version of VMC works just fine with sending & receiving SMSes.

 

[UnDeR±tAkEr]

If Vodacom/MTN can make PPDB's just as easy as buying airtime, then I think more people will take up that option.

But (if I am correct) the present system is a bit of a hassle - you have to buy prepaid airtime, then convert that airtime into a PPDB... if this step can be cut out, then more people will take it up.

Sure it's a hassle. But we Joe Public have put up with a lot of cr@p. Believe me I'd rather be spend time loading my airtime and buying my PPDB than getting calls from VC for a stupid bill. I have other people that also use my internet connection. So at least when the DB is used up I get no surprise bills.

 

[Roman4604]

to a hard cap you can place on your account.

V3G,

Is there any way to have a data cap without a bundle (i.e. all data out of bundle), or only a monetary cap (for calls & data)?

 

[ic]

V3G,

Is there any way to have a data cap without a bundle (i.e. all data out of bundle), or only a monetary cap (for calls & data)?

It's called [searchforum]"Call Limit"[/searchforum], however due to latency in usage [data and voice] records filtering through to the billing systems, Call Limit is not guaranteed to kick in immediately, still it's better than nothing, although pre-paid is the ultimate answer since pre-paid is realtime with no latency in usage records and a hard-cap is achieved by loading a precise amount of airtime credit.

 

[Roman4604]

It's called [searchforum]"Call Limit"[/searchforum], however due to latency in usage [data and voice] records filtering through to the billing systems, Call Limit is not guaranteed to kick in immediately, still it's better than nothing

IC, from your answer I can assume when on contract (with or without bundled monthly data allowance) VC has no technically accurate way of capping data usage?

If so anyone on contract better be VERY, VERY careful to manage/understand their data usage as there is no way to limit your financial exposure to out of bundle data rates (have heard of cases where call limit only kicked in > 48hr later).

Does this sound right?

 

[ic]

IC, from your answer I can assume when on contract (with or without bundled monthly data allowance) VC has no technically accurate way of capping data usage?

If so anyone on contract better be VERY, VERY careful to manage/understand their data usage as there is no way to limit your financial exposure to out of bundle data rates (have heard of cases where call limit only kicked in > 48hr later).

Does this sound right?

Technically yes, contract data usage records can take a long time to filter through to the billing systems which enforce the monetary "Call Limit", and yes it is everyone's responsibility to carefully monitor how much data is being transferred, and ensure to the best of their ability, that they do not go into OOB territory, OR just use PPDBs which are 100% realtime and only load enough airtime+ZAR1.00 to buy a PPDB and easily allow the PPDB to be completely depleted when near the end of a PPDB's data...

The solution is simple: use PPDBs and Internet Banking to transfer the exact amount needed to buy a PPDB + ZAR1.00, and the result is a realtime hard-capped data bundle.

 

[vodacom3g]

ic answered most of the questions but remember with a data contract you already paid for the data, so if you 'cap' at R0 you, in theory, will be capped as your bundle expires and you go into OOB.

Because of the delays on the contract billing systems, there is a time delay after this though. Typically spec'd at 3 hours.

 

[Big Kriss]

There are quite a few "precautionary" measures in place, from the SMS's you receive as you work through your bundle to a hard cap you can place on your account.

I've asked to check if AK65 got the SMS's but I suspect he never saw them, using the data card in a Linux configuration.

For these cases we built the ALTNUM capability.

Im using my data card in a linksys router..also no sms`s or any way to get Vodacom notifications..
On the 28 , 29 th and 30th of April I checked V4ME and each and every time there was a "cannot access data right now" message..I check my data usage EVERYDAY.
Because if this I forfeited over 80 M in data for April..
There must be a way to check and controll usage ACCURATELY..

 

[kevinswan007]

It's called [searchforum]"Call Limit"[/searchforum], however due to latency in usage [data and voice] records filtering through to the billing systems, Call Limit is not guaranteed to kick in immediately, still it's better than nothing, although pre-paid is the ultimate answer since pre-paid is realtime with no latency in usage records and a hard-cap is achieved by loading a precise amount of airtime credit.

funny how they can make pre-paid cut off as soon as the cap is reached, but ask for them to set a limit, and it can go over for days and thousands of rands before they cut you off.

 

[diabolus]

There are quite a few "precautionary" measures in place, from the SMS's you receive as you work through your bundle to a hard cap you can place on your account.

Indeed, however none of those are available to the customer to customize and expand [even at a fee]. I.e. one SMS at 90%,95%..not enough really, you'd want an SMS once the bundle is depleted , say every R100-R400 ALSO. Or you'd like a cap [i.e. R1000] which you can set yourself without your account be suspended , without needing to phone Vodacom helpdesk [we know how much fun that is].