News Tip-Offs and Investigations

airborne said:
That is very serious, they must be struggling and people dying while waiting :(
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And before people say it's because of idiotic government, they should be aware that many of these systems are supported by third party vendors.

Also, this happens to many big private companies too.
 
@Daniel Puchert or @Jan , you may be interested in one more DStv article; about the imbalance of what Multichoice charge and offer in neighbouring countries compared to here.

Most appears to be more expensive for neighbouring ROA. However, they seem to get more on smaller packages and that seems consistent everywhere... except here..

For instance some (maybe all? haven't looked) packages in Namibia - like the Access package which costs more and offers more than Access in SA.
R140 here, N$170 there (= R170).
They will get additional things like a main soccer channel (I think it's ch. 225) and it includes the 134 UKTV channel from BBC (old content) and the 139 basic movie channel, while we don't. (In SA it's only the Variety 4 sports channel (they also get that), and the other two examples are on our cheapest EasyView package only.)

This link more or less gets you the info, just change the country in the top right corner: https://www.dstv.com/en-za/buy/compare-packages
BUT be aware that their package details for most packages in ALL countries is often inaccurate, always has been as it's seldom checked or updated.
And some country's smallest packages refuse to be included in the compare table.


Another factor of possible interest:
There are ways to subscribe in other countries - it's called cross-pollination by MC, and although they don't like it they do allow it.
For neighbouring countries the satellite availability is the same in SA. For countries further north it is only possible to gain signal from that satellite system in northern regions of SA (Pretoria & Jo'burg included.)
 
After the FNB issue on the 29th July, they said all duplicate transactions will be reversed. This has not been done and now they want you to fill out card dispute forms. I have two payments at the same vendor for the same amount that failed via my virtual card and was successful via my physical credit card. FNB now wants me to log a dispute via a pdf form that they email you because you cannot dispute virtual cad transactions via the app. Was wondering if anybody else confirmed if any errors on FNB that occurred on the 29th June were fixed automatically.
 
I've been reliably informed that the building housing the SAPS IT department (technology management service) has had it's electricity cut off by Tshwane due to non-payment by SAPS. They've been running on generator power since last week. This disconnection potentially puts the entire SAPS IT system at risk.
 
This may be something worth looking into/ writing about. The UIF website/system has been broken for almost a month now (Missing employer information, page errors), now you can't even log in: https://ufiling.labour.gov.za/uif/

No notices on the website, they're ignoring emails and their call support says their system is offline and they have no idea when/if it will be online again.

I'm struggling to get a hold of anyone that actually knows what's going on, but it's complete radio silence. I have confirmed with 3 other people that they're also experiencing the same thing.
 

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Anyone with spot banking? They have launched spot mobile and have a promo running on a email they send me, but the sign contradicts the email big!
 

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Noticed today Temu orders have a customs duty of 44% and it's not clothing. How now?
 
Discussion around Acceptable Usage Policies of Fibre ISPs and how often ISPs have to remove people. Relating to the article about MTN's AUP for SMS and voice.

Relevant thread:

konfab said:
If only there were some tame tech journalists around that could ask the ISPs how often an AUP violation takes place on their networks.

I will put this suggestion in the relevant thread to see if Jan and the team will look into it. It is super interesting IMO.
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Have an idea for an interesting article:

Take an iPhone 16 Pro and a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and load data onto the phones' internal storage so that it fills up. Let's say 256GB minimum.

Now do the cloud backups for both of them one at a time using fast fibre links and then measure the speeds that they reach and how long it takes to complete.

You will be surprised how slow it is. It could even take days.

How pratical are phones with 1TB storage if it is that slow?
 
Multichoice allow for a no-spamming setting on our accounts' online dashboard, yet fully disregard that.

Here's my current settings at https://www.dstv.com/en-za/mydstv

DStv no spam setting 1.png

DStv no spam setting 2.png

1. This setting is sometimes changed by them to allow for some commercial contact, and we then need to reset it.

2. I also recently took the option offered to unsubscribe from their surveys.

We have been receiving a number of short calls related to this, where the caller hangs up before we can answer which is most irritating.

The number always used for this and all other calls received recently from them (and confirmed by them to be Multichoice related) is 011 369-4200. I suspect, but don't know, that they are a third party working on behalf of Multichoice.

Today I did find out that the company / division calling is called "Icon" as they at least stayed on the line. I complained, asked for a manager (who of course was "busy") , and insisted on not being called again.
Not 5 minutes later I was.... called again.

Edit: At the moment they are calling to offer one of their "Price-Lock" deals.

Holding for a manager again now, if I do get one I will try put an end to this personally. But it clearly needs wide addressing for the sake of others being harassed.
 
RedViking said:
Looks like a human took control of the AI. Which means every response is monitored, but someone also has access to every person's input.

Also what does "listen" mean just before the response. Meh, something is out of context.
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That was my gut. Someone got quietly fired at Google.
 
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