How to prevent bill shock

In mid-October (17 October 2011) the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States (US) struck a deal with mobile operators in the country to warn users that are in danger of exceeding the limits on their voice, data, and SMS bundles.

These alerts will be free and optional, according to a report on CNET, and are due to begin within 18 months.

With US wireless operators adopting such a system we wondered what South Africa’s mobile networks were doing to prevent bill shock, and asked them about it.

8ta

Telkom Mobile’s consumer arm, 8ta, said that they provide safety nets to subscribers through the following mechanisms:

• Notifications via SMS on voice, SMS and data usage. These are set at predefined intervals to ensure customers are kept aware of their usage.
• Spend limits that voice and data contract customers can set.
• Automatic redirect when a user reaches their limit for data usage, which 8ta said “provides customers with real-time online facilities to choose to surf at out of bundle rates, redeem vouchers or purchase data bundles on their respective packages when their data bundles are depleted.”
• Customers can at any time request their real time balances via USSD by dialling *188#.
• You can set spend limits on 8ta by contacting their call centre on 081 180 or visiting an 8ta store.

Vodacom

Vodacom said that they have the following interventions in place to help prevent bill shock.

• SMS notifications with data usage information. Contract subscribers get notifications when they’ve used 50%, 70%, and 90% of their cap. Prepaid and Top Up customers get notifications when they have 3MB remaining and when all allocated data has been used.
• Contract customers can choose a different number on any cellular network in SA on which to receive SMS usage notifications. SMS “ALTNUM” and the cellphone number to 123.

Vodacom also listed various methods subscribers can use to check their balances:

• By USSD by dialing *111#.
• Online, through MyAccount on the Vodacom website.
• By SMS by sending “ab”, “am”, or “mm” to 31050.
• By phoning 082 111 or 082 155 and requesting an update on usage.
• By phoning an interactive voice response system at 126.

DataMan: Example of an app that helps users manage data bundles

Virgin Mobile

Virgin Mobile said that all their contracts have limits. This is to prevent any “misunderstandings,” the mobile virtual network operator said.

These limits have default values (shown in the table below) that may be adjusted down or up (subject to credit checks) by the customer.

Other networks

MTN and Cell C did not respond by the time of publication.

However, a notice on the MTN service provider (MTNSP) website announced last year (2010) that they would discontinue bill limits and start phasing it out from 1 November 2010.

According to the document, which carries the signature of executive of customer relationship at MTNSP, Eddie Moyce, the service would be deactivated for all customers by 31 March 2011.

The reason they decided to stop offering bill limits, the announcement said, was because MTNSP couldn’t guarantee the quality of the service.

“While we are committed in ensuring timeous delivery of all call data records, there are instances when unforeseen circumstances due to systems and/or technical difficulties may delay the delivery of the call data records,” the document said.

MTNSP went on to recommend Top Up packages to “assist you in managing your spend.”