Pre Paid Data Bundles [PPDBs]

Should this thread be closed (locked)?

  • Yes, put it out of its misery

    Votes: 7 41.2%

  • No, I don't like euthanasia, leave it to die painfully & alone

    Votes: 10 58.8%

  • I'm confused, maybe all of the above

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    17
  • Poll closed .
Methias said:
Why is everyone treating this 4U contract like the plague? So what about credit checks? Banks love them when granting loans and financing. So far the only real valid reason/difference between a PPDB and this alternative is the ensured limit of not spending more than you paid for. Then does Vodacom provide a soft-lock option that will cap you when you hit your ad-hoc bundle total (which dynamically increases as you buy more ad-hoc bundles). If not then I can understand the need for PPDB's.
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1. The credit check means it's not an option if you can't get credit or even a bank account with a debit card.
2. The soft-lock doesn't always work and is NOT guaranteed to work. So if your connection does not stop downloading for some reason and the soft-lock fails you could end up with a bill in the tens of thousands which has been reported in the past.
3. You can only buy one ad-hoc bundle per month which is what we are interested in here. If it's depleted you have to pay the out-of-bundle rate and if you don't use it all you lose it. The solution with MTN was buying bundles slightly smaller than what you need and then switch to another sim card when that was depleted. Effectively not an option with Vodacom.

ajax said:
worked for me, they even credited my account with R23 when I got it activated. For my first bill Vodacom owed ME money :cool:
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Was that perhaps the amount of prepaid credit you had left? ;)
 
ic said:
There are 2 types of Vodacom contract data bundles:
  1. Bolt-On, which you can only have one of and continues every month until cancelled on a 4U contract; and
  2. Ad-Hoc, which is valid until the end of the month in which it is added, when an Ad-Hoc data bundle is used up you should be able to have another Ad-Hoc added for the same month - not that I've personally tried this yet.
You can also have the monthly Bolt-On and Ad-Hoc data bundles active within the same month.
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That makes it even worse. You have to subscribe to the same bundle every month or change it before the end of the month AND still use it up then if you add an ad-hoc bundle you have to use that up as well. With prepaid you can buy a large bundle and get a low rate, use it for 25 days and buy another, then use it for another 25 days. It's still not the equavalent of ppdbs.
 
Well considering there's zero monthly fee, zero activation if you have a prepaid sim you could in theory take out 2 or 3 contracts and then use them like prepaid sims with ad-hoc bundles.
 
ic said:
Personally I think Vodacom would be seen as the wireless broadband hero if it introduced data [bundle] rollover before MTN & iBurst & Sentech - one of them is bound to see the light & Vodacom should strive to be first to market with data [bundle] rollover - although looking at how long PPDBs have been taking Vodacom to get going...:rolleyes:
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Personally I think they would be seen as the wireless broadband hero if they dropped bundles all together and introduced an afforadable flat rate ( <= 20c / MB) .. :D

Virgin Mobile was almost hailed as a hero on this forum (just think of the number of sigs reading: "flat rate 50c / MB data") .. unfortunately they don't appear to have the capacity to reliably provide what they promise.. :(

At the end of the day flat rate per MB data is the most consumer centric solution of them all. :) (i.e., it leaves the pressure of "guessing" your data needs up to the provider)
 
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redarrow said:
Virgin Mobile was almost hailed as a hero on this forum (just think of the number of sigs reading: "flat rate 50c / MB data") .. unfortunately they don't appear to have the capacity to reliably provide what they promise.. :(
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Cell C should upgrade the links to 2Mb instead of the 512kb. I would like to have a faster speed. All the <500MB users can then jump ship to Virgin. Virgin can then reduce the rate to 20c/MB and grab the market.
 
ic said:
One could equally argue that Vodacom realizes that most of its data customers would be sufficiently surprised that they could suffer from permanent brain meltdowns if data bundles were thrown out the window. I am willing to risk such a meltdown :).
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I'll second that any day :D VC's new pricing looks tempting, but without rollover (i.e. Virgin style charging) you will also be forced to use up any unused MBs before they evaporate:rolleyes: I still find it a bit strange that the lower bundle prices were not changed - but then again it makes perfect sense - VC are ensuring that they don't lose any of their data revenue. But cheaper prices across the board would attract far more smaller users, like someone (can't remeber who :o ) said about promoting the idea of email for all.
 
ic said:
One could equally argue that Vodacom realizes that most of its data customers would be sufficiently surprised that they could suffer from permanent brain meltdowns if data bundles were thrown out the window. I am willing to risk such a meltdown :).
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ROFL :D

So they're actually concerend about the health of their customers.. :D

That would make sense though... As Jon said to Garfield: "You can't milk a dead cow" :D
 
Anyone taking bets for data bundles launching the 1st of April? Odds start at 1000 to 1 it doesn't happen.

Disclaimer: no real bets will be taken or money paid out.
* Vodacom employees not allowed to enter.
 
how do i load a ad-hoc bundle (once off) of 500mb??? do i send a sms "mymeg500" to 100 ?????
 
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yip a contract ad-hoc bundle....

thanks ic i will give them a call
 
Freedom at a price .......

Somehow having to load these bundles every month does not sound very exciting. Having to call any call centre does not rate very high on my list of things I want to do.

Is there still a R2/MB risk in the background ? It seems so ...... then it would just be a trap for users that don't monitor their connections like hawks. I am sick of having to refer every decision I make on the net to Netlimiter !

Edit: I give in ........ guess it is me an Vodashop Centurion on Monday morning for a 4U contract and 2GB bolt-on @ R389.00

Dancing to the devil's fiddle again !
 
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MyDraadloos said:
Somehow having to load these bundles every month does not sound very exciting. Having to call any call centre does not rate very high on my list of things I want to do.

Is there still a R2/MB risk in the background ? It seems so ...... then it would just be a trap for users that don't monitor their connections like hawks. I am sick of having to refer every decision I make on the net to Netlimiter !
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Indeed, it's a major issue. Although if you are on a contract [even the 4U one] , you actually 'subscribe' to a bundle which will auto-renew every month until you cancel. But yes, the R2 OOB thing is unfortunately still very much there to bite you PLUS the inability to view your usage realtime.

With MTN prepaid at least you can avoid the OOB by simply not adding airtime , thus your connection will just die when your bundle is used up. At least you can load bundles without any call center [ie. just using menu prompts] AND it's immediate . With Vodacom Contract you need to say in ADVANCE what bundle to load for the next month...

Although MTN contract got the exact same issues as Vodacom with bundles and OOB tariffs [and inability to present realtime usage] . BUT MTN does have lower OOB tariffs depending on your bundle [i.e R1.20 of you have 1GB] .

However i do find it a pain to load airtime to buy bundles, primarily because i can't load R500 "one shot" , not sure if it's a ABSA limitation or MTN not having that size vouchers...but to load R500 i need to do 3 transactions [R180 + R180 + R180 ] .....
 
diabolus said:
However i do find it a pain to load airtime to buy bundles, primarily because i can't load R500 "one shot" , not sure if it's a ABSA limitation or MTN not having that size vouchers...but to load R500 i need to do 3 transactions [R180 + R180 + R180 ] .....
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It's MTN. I don't know why they think a user would only want R180 airtime at a time. There are people who can use this up in a day, but then they want you to use a contract instead so you can't monitor your account. Just one more way prepaid are screwed over.
:sick:
 
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