My R13000 Data Bill

SoftDev said:
Very strange, my company uses a lot of the 3G cards for staff to after hour’s support, on one of these contracts we received a bill for R9000.00, according to the account the data usage responsible for this bill started on the 19th of March as well. We will take this up with our service provider Nashua, just very strange that is on the same day AK65's problem started.
Click to expand...

I would very much appreciate it if you could shed some light on the issue........

I very much believe that it was NOT somebody hacking into my wireless network, as I live in a sparsely populated neighbourhood....and somebody would have had to be parked very close by to get signal - of course doesn't rule out somebody using a high gain antenna from far away.....

What to me seems the most likely culprit is a Windows update gone wrong ....... Windows downloading and re-downloading a corrupt file ad infinitum.......Because I did see a lot of windowsupdate.com.au stuff in the logs.......and it can't be a mere coincidence that these events both happened on the 19th of March.

As usual, it's Microsoft's fault :mad:
 
If you want to block windowsupdate with a cheap trick, add the following line to your hosts file (remember to press enter after the line) :

(there is a tab between the url and ip)

Code: 
windowsupdate.com.au      127.0.0.1

which means that any queries or requests to windowsupdate gets rerouted to your local pc, and won't leave your network. :D
 
AK65 said:
I would very much appreciate it if you could shed some light on the issue........

I very much believe that it was NOT somebody hacking into my wireless network, as I live in a sparsely populated neighbourhood....and somebody would have had to be parked very close by to get signal - of course doesn't rule out somebody using a high gain antenna from far away.....

What to me seems the most likely culprit is a Windows update gone wrong ....... Windows downloading and re-downloading a corrupt file ad infinitum.......Because I did see a lot of windowsupdate.com.au stuff in the logs.......and it can't be a mere coincidence that these events both happened on the 19th of March.

As usual, it's Microsoft's fault :mad:
Click to expand...

I had that with Vista SP1, it downloaded to 87 % and then restarted. Used 1GB of data before I fixed it. (By downloading and installing manually)

And, lo and behold, I just checked my update logs and it started on the 19th of March!!
 
Last edited:
Just checked my logs......

The trouble started precisely on the 18th of March (hey call me a liar for one day) at 8:14 pm and finished on the 19th at 11:42 pm. I had checked Vodacom4me a day or two before that and saw I had a couple of hundred Meg till month end, so I was under a BIG misconception that everything was hunky-dory.

As for the .au - I don't know why. Why Microsoft don't have local mirrors - I don't know. I have decommissioned that machine anyway, so I won't get that trouble again .......

At least Ubuntu asks you whether you want to update........

I never trusted the whole Microsoft 'Just sit there and your operating system will keep updated'.

The whole thing makes me feel sick really, because out of this thing, there's a pile of money wasted, and not benefit for it at all.

Right now a 3 gig iburst month-to-month contract with throttle softcap looks like a good option.......It would be cool if Vodacom 3G could work like that......
 
Last edited:
Not really the same thing as what happened to me......

I was just a victim of an automated system gone wrong...
 
I only saw the thread now... been kinda busy lately.
Is this your private account? Eina!
One of our users at the office a few weeks ago got a lekka >R22000 bill from MTN. He was on biztrip in USA so ofcourse the insane roaming charges were added :) At least the company will (very grudgingly) foot the bill.
I dunno how these guys in US (or any of the other countries) can sleep well charging R45/Mb, we think our guys at R25/Mb are bad! Guess easy munny is just part of business :)
Would've been nice if the network provider could have had some monitor on the accounts, ... once you go over say R5000 maybe think of calling the user up and asking WTF is going on. What happens if it runs to R100K and u cant pay, sure it must be in the networks interest too to warn the guys?
Still, guess we can't put all the responsibility at the networks.
I have also learnt the hard way to check the bandwidth monitor every so often, especially now that the speeds are so high. Laptop will easily start downloading updates.... not to mention wife and mailing photos :( (she doesn't know from changing filetype to reduce file size :sick: )
She recently sent +-300Mbs worth of photos, at R2 a Mb (i'm on MyChoice 150... 'normally' don't use that much)... so that +-R600 mail came back coz recipient mailbox can't take such mo3rse mails... "hallo! change to jpeg!!!!... could've gloss printed and courier delivered for cheaper)
 
Last edited:
CeeBee said:
I only saw the thread now... been kinda busy lately.
Is this your private account? Eina!
One of our users at the office a few weeks ago got a lekka >R22000 bill from MTN. He was on biztrip in USA so ofcourse the insane roaming charges were added :) At least the company will (very grudgingly) foot the bill.
I dunno how these guys in US (or any of the other countries) can sleep well charging R45/Mb, we think our guys at R25/Mb are bad! Guess easy munny is just part of business :)
Would've been nice if the network provider could have had some monitor on the accounts, ... once you go over say R5000 maybe think of calling the user up and asking WTF is going on. What happens if it runs to R100K and u cant pay, sure it must be in the networks interest too to warn the guys?
Still, guess we can't put all the responsibility at the networks.
I have also learnt the hard way to check the bandwidth monitor every so often, especially now that the speeds are so high. Laptop will easily start downloading updates.... not to mention wife and mailing photos :( (she doesn't know from changing filetype to reduce file size :sick: )
She recently sent +-300Mbs worth of photos, at R2 a Mb (i'm on MyChoice 150... 'normally' don't use that much)... so that +-R600 mail came back coz recipient mailbox can't take such mo3rse mails... "hallo! change to jpeg!!!!... could've gloss printed and courier delivered for cheaper)
Click to expand...

We do actually call people up when it looks like something is not right. But the problem is the speed at which things can go wrong. At 3.6Mb/s, you can have a serious data bill before any process kicks in.
 
vodacom3g said:
We do actually call people up when it looks like something is not right. But the problem is the speed at which things can go wrong. At 3.6Mb/s, you can have a serious data bill before any process kicks in.
Click to expand...

You getting that felling that you're repeating yourself? :p
 
You said it before........


No wait, you didn't.........


Well actually, you did ..........
No you did mention before that by the time processes have started, a few hours may have passed and damage may have been done.

If the problem was a dud Vodacom cache, do I get my money back? :P
 
AK65 said:
You said it before........


No wait, you didn't.........


Well actually, you did ..........
No you did mention before that by the time processes have started, a few hours may have passed and damage may have been done.

If the problem was a dud Vodacom cache, do I get my money back? :P
Click to expand...


How do you figure a dud cache the cause?

BTW, if your sig says "M$-free", why are you downloading M$ updates? :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X