Complaint against Vodacom

blunomore

blunomore

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We have a 3G contract with Vodacom and received a shocking account of R20K this month.

Our contract gives us 2Gig per month and, whilst we normally exceed that limit and get charged out-of-bundle rates, the total bill is never more than approx R1 500.

We tried to find out from them how it is possible that we used so much data and they were uhmm-ing and ahh-ing and could not give a proper answer. The guy I spoke to, speculated that it could be due to e-mails looping (the IT people will know what that means, I don't!) or that there could be viruses on the PC.

Does that sound like a probable explanation to you guys?

We reported them to the Consumer Commission and will see what happens.
 
Blu, have you never ventured into the geekier parts of this site? There have been threads, warnings and stickies about this topic. Likelihood is you will have to pay it...
 
Oooobed!

oob.jpg
 
DJ... said:
Blu, have you never ventured into the geekier parts of this site? There have been threads, warnings and stickies about this topic. Likelihood is you will have to pay it...
Click to expand...

Huh??

Am not following what you're saying ....
 
blunomore said:
We have a 3G contract with Vodacom and received a shocking account of R20K this month.

Our contract gives us 2Gig per month and, whilst we normally exceed that limit and get charged out-of-bundle rates, the total bill is never more than approx R1 500.

We tried to find out from them how it is possible that we used so much data and they were uhmm-ing and ahh-ing and could not give a proper answer. The guy I spoke to, speculated that it could be due to e-mails looping (the IT people will know what that means, I don't!) or that there could be viruses on the PC.

Does that sound like a probable explanation to you guys?

We reported them to the Consumer Commission and will see what happens.
Click to expand...

/reports another oob-shark attack by yours truly
 
blunomore said:
Huh??

Am not following what you're saying ....
Click to expand...

Out of bundle shocks are commonplace and certainly not an issue for the NCC. Likelihood is you picked up a virus or windows and a few applications updated themselves or something along those lines. You always go prepaid for data - never on contract. I've also had my fair share of OOB shocks.

Bottom line is that 9/10 it is the customer at fault, not Vodacom. Sure, they do little to warn people about the dangers, but it really isn't their responsibility to educate you about every conceivable threat to data hogs on your system...
 
Well as for the email looping part, that doesn't seem too feasible.. Email looping is mostly due to auto responders, and having a 20K bill at say the out of bundle rate at vodacom which is R1 p/m will give you about 20 000 mb then = 20gb. Considering the average email is oh lets say 100kb for simplicities sake that gives 209 715.2 mails. So unless you received upwards of 200K emails in the last month. Why don't you ask for a itemized statement? Then you can see exactly when the massive spikes occurred. As for a virus, it seems possible if the virus is downloading something all the time. Did you see a massive drop of free space perhaps on your drive/s? But alas I can explain possibilities all day but in the end it is vodacom, and unless you can absolutely prove you are not the fault I think you'l have to pay.
 
DJ... said:
Out of bundle shocks are commonplace and certainly not an issue for the NCC. Likelihood is you picked up a virus or windows and a few applications updated themselves or something along those lines. You always go prepaid for data - never on contract. I've also had my fair share of OOB shocks.

Bottom line is that 9/10 it is the customer at fault, not Vodacom. Sure, they do little to warn people about the dangers, but it really isn't their responsibility to educate you about every conceivable threat to data hogs on your system...
Click to expand...

I see what you mean.

My husband seems to think that because we have had a small-ish account for years now, this is worth reporting to the Consumer Commission because of the shock it caused us :D

I have learnt the exact lesson you mentioned, though. Am now using pre-paid data from MTN.
 
blunomore said:
We have a 3G contract with Vodacom and received a shocking account of R20K this month.

Our contract gives us 2Gig per month and, whilst we normally exceed that limit and get charged out-of-bundle rates, the total bill is never more than approx R1 500.

We tried to find out from them how it is possible that we used so much data and they were uhmm-ing and ahh-ing and could not give a proper answer. The guy I spoke to, speculated that it could be due to e-mails looping (the IT people will know what that means, I don't!) or that there could be viruses on the PC.

Does that sound like a probable explanation to you guys?

We reported them to the Consumer Commission and will see what happens.
Click to expand...

Could be a lot of reasons. Virus, email loop, download loop, other malware, someone downloading torrents etc.

The guy at Vodacom should not be able to see what you are viewing. It would be against the law. Its your responsibility to control your network.
 
I have a couple of 2GB contracts with VC, but I made sure that I took the Top-up options (and lost the 2GB midnight surfer) just to ensure that I don't have an Out-Of-Bundle situation.

IMO one should NEVER have an open-ended data contract.
 
Data contracts should have a built in hard cap on OOB data, to be nominated by the user at the time of signing the contract. Anything else should be classed as irresponsible selling IMHO.
 
what the hell?? that's crazy. my pc is locked down to protect itself from itself. any application update requests internet access. there still should be able to detail the sites and stuff. or is that to much to ask.
 
akescpt said:
what the hell?? that's crazy. my pc is locked down to protect itself from itself. any application update requests internet access. there still should be able to detail the sites and stuff. or is that to much to ask.
Click to expand...

Its illegal for an ISP to monitor where you are going. So yeah, under the current law system it is too much to ask. What is not too much to ask is for you to install your own software and manage your stuff correctly. Use netlimiter or something).
 
blunomore said:
We have a 3G contract with Vodacom and received a shocking account of R20K this month.

Our contract gives us 2Gig per month and, whilst we normally exceed that limit and get charged out-of-bundle rates, the total bill is never more than approx R1 500.

We tried to find out from them how it is possible that we used so much data and they were uhmm-ing and ahh-ing and could not give a proper answer. The guy I spoke to, speculated that it could be due to e-mails looping (the IT people will know what that means, I don't!) or that there could be viruses on the PC.

Does that sound like a probable explanation to you guys?

We reported them to the Consumer Commission and will see what happens.
Click to expand...


Chat to Ockie.
He helped me out in April when a friend had the same issue.
 
Is there a simple software app that will detect the programmes on my laptop/pc and tell me if they are accessing the web?
 
ghoti said:
Its illegal for an ISP to monitor where you are going. So yeah, under the current law system it is too much to ask. What is not too much to ask is for you to install your own software and manage your stuff correctly. Use netlimiter or something).
Click to expand...

The average user may not be technically savvy enough to understand all of this.

Hence, my opinion about a hard cap
 
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