{"id":323496,"date":"2019-11-27T09:01:13","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T07:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=323496"},"modified":"2019-11-27T09:02:02","modified_gmt":"2019-11-27T07:02:02","slug":"cell-c-data-bundles-deplete-with-no-notifications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/323496-cell-c-data-bundles-deplete-with-no-notifications.html","title":{"rendered":"Cell C data bundles deplete with no notifications"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Cell C customer told MyBroadband that he has repeatedly run out of mobile data without receiving a final notification of bundle depletion.<\/p>\n

ICASA’s regulations compel South African mobile operators to meet certain requirements with regards to data bundle depletion notifications.<\/p>\n

These include allowing customers to roll over unused data and providing the option to opt into or out of out-of-bundle (OOB) charges.<\/p>\n

Operators must also notify their customers when their data bundle has been depleted by 50%, 80%, and 100%.<\/p>\n

The customer in question had a different experience with regards to his Cell C data usage.<\/p>\n

The contract<\/h3>\n

The issue affected the customer’s Postpaid Pinnacle 100 contract, which includes 100 minutes of airtime, 100 SMSs and 100MB.<\/p>\n

The customer said he routinely purchased an additional data bundle of 3GB at the beginning of every month.<\/p>\n

His data was often consumed before the end of the month, but this was not usually a problem as Cell C quickly notified him about the depletion.<\/p>\n

This allowed him to purchase a new bundle immediately and avoid paying OOB rates.<\/p>\n

These notifications are shown below.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

New data depletion notifications<\/h3>\n

The customer first noted an issue after purchasing a 3GB Anytime data bundle on 6 August 2019.<\/p>\n

On 12 August, he received an SMS stating that he had less than 2,456MB remaining, which meant he had consumed about 20% of his bundle.<\/p>\n

According to the customer, this was the last data depletion notification he would receive in August.<\/p>\n

The customer’s bill for the month then showed that his bundle had been depleted and that he had automatically been charged out-of-bundle rates for data consumption.<\/p>\n

In September 2019, the customer received several data depletion notifications for his 3GB bundle – once at 2,456MB (20%), and another at 1,534MB (50%).<\/p>\n

The customer ran out of mobile data on 17 September and received no 100% depletion notification, however.<\/p>\n

The customer said he was monitoring his data usage and bought an additional 1.5GB bundle, for which he received depletion notifications at 1,225MB (20%) and 291MB (80%), after which he did not receive another notification when his data ran out.<\/p>\n

As a result of reaching his monthly spend limit thanks to out-of-bundle data charges, the customer chose to use a portable Wi-Fi router for the rest of the month.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Spend Control<\/h3>\n

After he had consumed his backup usage allocation for the second time, he decided to set an OOB limit via Cell’s Spend Control feature.<\/p>\n

This would cut off his mobile data connection instead of charging him out-of-bundle rates when his data was depleted.<\/p>\n

Since he had previously received messages warning of out-of-bundle data consumption, he had never needed to use this.<\/p>\n

Cell C responds<\/h3>\n

After conducting an investigation, Cell C told MyBroadband that according to its data, the data depletion notification messages were sent and no blockages were occurring. It said the notifications should be working as normal.<\/p>\n

According to the operator, “less than 1MB” notification SMSs had been sent at 100% depletion, but the customer could not find these anywhere in his SMS inbox.<\/p>\n

MyBroadband contacted ICASA for comment on the issue, which reiterated the data depletion notification amendments made to the regulations.<\/p>\n

“One of the amendments related to usage notifications where licensees would be required to provide consumers with an option to opt-out of usage depletion notifications for voice, SMS and data services,” ICASA said.<\/p>\n

“Where a consumer did not opt-out of usage notifications, a licensee is required to notify that consumer at the intervals of 50%, 80%, and 100% of data usage or depletion,” ICASA stated.<\/p>\n

The customer said that he had never opted out of this service, evidenced by the fact that he was still receiving intermittent depletion notifications.<\/p>\n

Now read: Cell C launches new summer campaign \u2013 Here are the deals<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Cell C customer told MyBroadband that he has repeatedly run out of mobile data without receiving a final notification of bundle depletion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":262635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[43164,355,369,35],"class_list":["post-323496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-bundles","tag-cell-c","tag-data","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323496"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323496"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329955,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323496\/revisions\/329955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}