Vodacom ripping me off?

C

charlh

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After nearly 18 months of loading R12 airtime vouchers, I finally earned 101 talking points. Not wanting to forfeit any points, I exchanged 100 points for a 100 sms bundle.
I sent one sms. When I checked my balance on vodacom4me, and then on the new site, I saw I only have 97 sms's left. WHY?
My sms was a total of 149 characters, and according to my Nokia OVI suite that I typed the message on, I still had 11 characters to go before the sms reached the 160 limit.

So, what I would like to know is, is a 'promotion' sms only worth 50 characters?
If so, why don't the say so when you redeem points?
Or is Vodacom deliberately ripping me off?
 
charlh said:
Or is Vodacom deliberately ripping me off?
Click to expand...

Why do you even ask? This is South Africa! :)

With some of the highest call rates in the world. Where we must trust ICASA to do our bidding for us. Where we pay R389 for 2GB data. Where Telkom's CEO has trouble finding the door to his office. Where we get taxed for anything and everything. Where some stoopid radio ad is trying to make you believe that toll roads will actually be good for you.

Do I need to go on?
 
you most certainly be *****d . With the rest of guateng folks
im still waiting for taxi industrys reaction... Because the is only so much ***t that people can take before reaping the rewards of ur own ***t. eg education
 
charlh said:
After nearly 18 months of loading R12 airtime vouchers, I finally earned 101 talking points. Not wanting to forfeit any points, I exchanged 100 points for a 100 sms bundle.
I sent one sms. When I checked my balance on vodacom4me, and then on the new site, I saw I only have 97 sms's left. WHY?
My sms was a total of 149 characters, and according to my Nokia OVI suite that I typed the message on, I still had 11 characters to go before the sms reached the 160 limit.

So, what I would like to know is, is a 'promotion' sms only worth 50 characters?
If so, why don't the say so when you redeem points?
Or is Vodacom deliberately ripping me off?
Click to expand...

Whats your number, lets get the facts.
 
charlh said:
I sent one sms. When I checked my balance on vodacom4me, and then on the new site, I saw I only have 97 sms's left. WHY?
Click to expand...
Very interesting! I normally buy one 200 SMS bundle every month, I don't normally use all of them so I lose a couple at the end of the 30 day window. Once though, my SMS bundle lasted for 60 days, since then I have been out of phase with the calendar month which has been a pain since data bundles expire at the end of the calendar month and I'd prefer to transfer airtime and buy both bundles at the same time.

On the 7th of September I received an SMS stating that I had 107 talking points, of which 38 were going to expire on the 1st of October.

I figured it would be a good idea to redeem my Talking Points for a 100 SMS bundle, and even if I didn't use all of them I could buy a new bundle on the 1st and get back in sync with the calendar.

Well, they didn't even last that long, they ran out last weekend and I had to wait until today to buy a new bundle. I thought to myself they seemed to run out rather quickly, unfortunately I didn't take note of how many I used, so I could have just been chattier than usual.
 
There is no difference between purchasing a sms bundle in the normal way and converting your talking points with regards to how it is used. i am still waiting on the number to chceck what actualy happened , would be interesting to see. Also if you purchase a sms bundle before the end of the month , then you wont lose the balance of the previous sms's.
 
VodacomData said:
Whats your number, lets get the facts.
Click to expand...

Thanks VData
You have been PM'd

And happened again tonight. I sent 2 sms's. The first was 119 characters- went through as one message. The second was 186 characters-went through as 3 messages! And this time I used Nokia PC suite to send the messages.
 
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BTW. How do I check the balance on my phone? Both vodafone live and *111# say that I do not have an active sms bundle. And right now I'm going to swing a 15lb hammer through my pc because everything is especially slow tonight!!!!
 
Thanks VodacomData
I got some feedback from customer service. They suggested I change the character support settings on my phone is set to 'GSM Alphabet'. I don't have that setting on my E65, but it was set to 'full support'. I have now set it to 'reduced support', and will see how that works.

Thank you for your time
 
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VodacomData said:
There is no difference between purchasing a sms bundle in the normal way and converting your talking points with regards to how it is used.
Click to expand...
The standard SMS bundles and Talking Points SMS bundles are kept in completely different "buckets".
charlh said:
BTW. How do I check the balance on my phone? Both vodafone live and *111# say that I do not have an active sms bundle.
Click to expand...
It is *111#,1,2 for SMS Bundle Balance, and *111#,1,4 for Talking Points SMS Bundle.
 
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