Virus Drains Data Bundle R10 000 later.

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xrapidx said:
... I think Bruce's friends need to have a chat with Vodacom, he is responsible and needs to accept that, but it is a fairly honest mistake, its not like he got 10k's worth of MP3s, games, etc.

If they can see he didn't get anything out of it then the best customer service point of view would be a fine of sorts and lesson learnt. Making him pay the 10k might be a bit unreasonable if they can see it was accidental, they could charge him their cost..
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Now this is good advice.
 
ic said:
Since everyone loves these analogies, here is another analogy: let's say you go to a shop to buy a toilet seat [maybe your toilet seat broke], does the toilet seat salesperson need to tell you anything about your toilet and the potential dangers of using your toilet, or that you need to use some %toilet-duck% to keep the toilet bowl clean?

PS: In that scenario the actual toilet is Microsoft Windoze, and malware is the germs etc that accumulate around the toilet bowl, and the toilet seat is any Internet connection...
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That's a funny scenario:D But remember the government also supplies education on what Viruses you can an can not catch from a toilet seat:rolleyes:
 
xrapidx said:
Ask them for a report on where the data went... like what websites... they need to be able to tell you that...
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I know that he did ask for a itemised bill. Don't know if they supplied it to him or not. But as soon as I hear anything I will Post it.

Thanks
B
 
Bruce000 said:
I know that he did ask for a itemised bill. Don't know if they supplied it to him or not. But as soon as I hear anything I will Post it.

Thanks
B
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if he doesn't get one, dont pay it... no one can tell you you owe them 10k and not tell you what for... he has a right to know where the data went, and to challenge that.

...get him to send an invoice right back to Vodacom for 10k, if they ask what for, tell him to say he doesnt know... same thing they would be doing to him.
 
Iam3G said:
Firstly, i dont sell these things as i'm no sales consultant. How many times? i dont. Its called the USER MANUAL. The customer also cant expect a sales consultant to sit there for a few hours showing them how their device works? What about other customers that need to be helped??

The whole point of the retail industry is to produce a fast effective service to keep customers happy. Look at it from the retail store owners point of view... time = money. alot of time = loss of money. So... alot of time spent on training/informing/turoring the customer = bad for business.



Guess again. You get those people who DO fiddle around with their stuff catching on k@k. Then what? Are they going to blame the PC tech becoz he/she didnt INFORM them? Hypothetically speaking... why was he scratching around with things he knew nothing of??



I wouldnt need to give him any support becoz he clearly knew what he was doing. As bruce000 said, his friend had his AV up to date and running.

The fact remains, he left his connection active for 3days. That was his decision.
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You are missing the point. It takes 5-10 Minutes, to inform the customer about the risks of being charged by data useage and not by time useage.

So what you are saying is that you will not inform the customers of the risks when using 3G/HSDPA and the oob rates etc.
 
xrapidx said:
if he doesn't get one, dont pay it... no one can tell you you owe them 10k and not tell you what for... he has a right to know where the data went, and to challenge that.

...get him to send an invoice right back to Vodacom for 10k, if they ask what for, tell him to say he doesnt know... same thing they would be doing to him.
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I second that.
:cool:
 
My thoughts on this topic are as follows:
  • It wasn't a good idea for Bruce's friend to leave his internet connection unattended for so long.
  • He/she should have had a soft lock on the contract in question.
  • Vodacom, IMO, had a duty to inform this person about the high usage after the bill went 50% over his/her normal bill.
  • Vodacom should take into consideration all the facts and try to come to an amicable solution.
  • As mentioned previously, my solution would be to charge the 5GB bundle price.
 
sky.akash said:
My thoughts on this topic are as follows:
  • It wasn't a good idea for Bruce's friend to leave his internet connection unattended for so long.
  • He/she should have had a soft lock on the contract in question.
  • Vodacom, IMO, had a duty to inform this person about the high usage after the bill went 50% over his/her normal bill.
  • Vodacom should take into consideration all the facts and try to come to an amicable solution.
  • As mentioned previously, my solution would be to charge the 5GB bundle price.
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It is now time that Bruce's friend gives some feedback before we go any further. He has taken his notebook to customer care so we are awaiting.

:cool:
 
ic said:
Yep, I agree 100%, however one of the reasons for wanting Bruce000's friend to post here, is to get more detailed info, for example we all know that Vodacom's data transfer stats are not filtered through in realtime - not even to Vodacom's own internal systems, and much like ADSL, it usually takes a disconnect to force a stats update. Now if we take into account the fact that the connection was up for 3 days - we can safely assume continuously since as far as I know VMC requires a manual reconnect, then Vodacom might not have known about the unusually high usage until the connection eventually did drop on the 3rd day. The conclusion there is that Vodacom has a crap system that needs to be overhauled for realtime data transfer usage.

Also, I know not many people experience their connections staying active for long periods of time without a disconnect, but some forumites will definitely tell you that they have managed to stay connected for several days at a time - which BTW is not irresponsible behaviour if you have a proper firewall and anti-malware s/w in place and haven't left any bandwidth-hungry apps running to chew through your data bundle...
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The three hour delay is just not acceptable as some people must be overshooting their bundle at month end based on the available stats, when they are trying to use up their bundle before it expires.

A prepaid sim with the exact amount of the bundle cost alleviates these problems.
 
ic said:
Yep, I agree 100%, however one of the reasons for wanting Bruce000's friend to post here, is to get more detailed info, for example we all know that Vodacom's data transfer stats are not filtered through in realtime - not even to Vodacom's own internal systems, and much like ADSL, it usually takes a disconnect to force a stats update. Now if we take into account the fact that the connection was up for 3 days - we can safely assume continuously since as far as I know VMC requires a manual reconnect, then Vodacom might not have known about the unusually high usage until the connection eventually did drop on the 3rd day. The conclusion there is that Vodacom has a crap system that needs to be overhauled for realtime data transfer usage.

Also, I know not many people experience their connections staying active for long periods of time without a disconnect, but some forumites will definitely tell you that they have managed to stay connected for several days at a time - which BTW is not irresponsible behaviour if you have a proper firewall and anti-malware s/w in place and haven't left any bandwidth-hungry apps running to chew through your data bundle...
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Some questions based on what @ic has just said.

1) How does Friend know he was connected for 3 days?
2) If he did stay connected for 3 days then he would not have received the warning sms's because the system did not know he went over that far.
3) Even if the system did have R1500 limit it would not have locked him because it did not know that he had gone over the limit.
4) Does the system not have a force read after a certain amount of hours being connected?

Well @ic v3g gave you the Mantle while he is gone. So run down the passage find out and let us know.

Lekker slaap see you tomorrow. :p
 
Csnoopy said:
Some questions based on what @ic has just said.

1) How does Friend know he was connected for 3 days?
2) If he did stay connected for 3 days then he would not have received the warning sms's because the system did not know he went over that far.
3) Even if the system did have R1500 limit it would not have locked him because it did not know that he had gone over the limit.
4) Does the system not have a force read after a certain amount of hours being connected?

Well @ic v3g gave you the Mantle while he is gone. So run down the passage find out and let us know.

Lekker slaap see you tomorrow. :p
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The only reason why we assume he was connected for tree days is because vodacom told him that this 10k bill was run up over a 3 day period.
 
Bruce000 said:
Not sure if you guys have chatted about this before, if so i apologize, but here goes.
One of my friends has a weekender that he uses on occasion as a data card on his laptop, if his prepaid one runs out.He had this data card in his laptop for tree days. He received a phone call from Vodacom yesterday that informed him that his account is standing at R10 000. Needless to say he almost Sh@t himself:eek:.
When asking Vodacom what happened they informed him that it could be a virus.
My question is, why should he be liable to pay this. Surely it should be Vodacoms responsibility to supply hardware that isn't susceptible to this kind of virus ( Like the banks take responsibility for Internet fraud). Surely there should be some kind of limit?
I spoke to a friend of mine that works in a Local Vodashop. He seems to think that it is the clients fault for accepting the virus. The thing is he does have an anti-virus program running 24-7 in the background.

Just would like to know what you guys think.

Thanks
B
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You said he ran it for 3days, not that Vodacom said so. You never specified. So my posts and advice(including the rest of us) was based on the information you gave. And we have yet to hear about your friend... *hint hint*
 
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Bruce000 said:
The only reason why we assume he was connected for tree days is because vodacom told him that this 10k bill was run up over a 3 day period.
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Iam3G said:
You said he ran it for 3days, not that Vodacom said so. You never specified. So my posts and advice(including the rest of us) was based on the information you gave. And we have yet to hear about your friend... *hint hint*
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Actually it was "tree" days:D

Sorry:o
 
Iam3G said:
You said he ran it for 3days, not that Vodacom said so. You never specified. So my posts and advice(including the rest of us) was based on the information you gave. And we have yet to hear about your friend... *hint hint*
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Sorry Iam3g I am running on info that I'm getting from him. (**** me out why don't you) They can't tell me if it disconnected or not they can't remember every little action that took place that weekend, as Vodacom only phoned them two weeks later with the information on the dates that this incident occurred.
I asked my friend today and he has not heard from them yet.
 
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