yebosa
Active Member
Vodacom’s Data Contracts are a scam.
While data bundle contracts seem to offer good value in terms of megabytes for your Rand, there is a catch.
If you were to buy a ‘once-off’ data bundle your connection is cut as soon as you have used all the data purchased.
Not so with contract data. It seems obvious that Vodacom wants you to exceed your allocation so they can charge you for “out-of-bundle-data”, at a premium price of course.
If you are using the SIMM in a 3G modem or Router it is not practical to remove the SIMM, put it in a phone and constantly check the balance of your bundle.
What seems to be the most logical option is to use Vodacom’s website to check the balance. However, although the website shows a balance with a date and time it nearly always lies. While it gives the impression of a ‘real-time’ balance this is not the case. I have had to wait HOURS for the system to accurately reflect the true data balance remaining.
The other option is to set a ‘Call Limit’. There are two problems with this.
1. The minimum amount for going over the limit is R50.00. This constitutes 1/3 of the price on a 2GB contract. And for this you will get 25MB of data.
2. The system does NOT automatically stop you passing the R50 limit. Due to some ‘time lag’ it is possible to exceed this amount even though you have specified it as a limit.
My question to Vodacom is simple……
If you can monitor and terminate a pay-as-you-go data bundle in real time, why can’t you do this for contract subscribers? I suspect that you want the contract people to exceed the limit to make extra money out of them. I consider this to be an unfair business practice and it should be reported to ICASA.
While data bundle contracts seem to offer good value in terms of megabytes for your Rand, there is a catch.
If you were to buy a ‘once-off’ data bundle your connection is cut as soon as you have used all the data purchased.
Not so with contract data. It seems obvious that Vodacom wants you to exceed your allocation so they can charge you for “out-of-bundle-data”, at a premium price of course.
If you are using the SIMM in a 3G modem or Router it is not practical to remove the SIMM, put it in a phone and constantly check the balance of your bundle.
What seems to be the most logical option is to use Vodacom’s website to check the balance. However, although the website shows a balance with a date and time it nearly always lies. While it gives the impression of a ‘real-time’ balance this is not the case. I have had to wait HOURS for the system to accurately reflect the true data balance remaining.
The other option is to set a ‘Call Limit’. There are two problems with this.
1. The minimum amount for going over the limit is R50.00. This constitutes 1/3 of the price on a 2GB contract. And for this you will get 25MB of data.
2. The system does NOT automatically stop you passing the R50 limit. Due to some ‘time lag’ it is possible to exceed this amount even though you have specified it as a limit.
My question to Vodacom is simple……
If you can monitor and terminate a pay-as-you-go data bundle in real time, why can’t you do this for contract subscribers? I suspect that you want the contract people to exceed the limit to make extra money out of them. I consider this to be an unfair business practice and it should be reported to ICASA.
