WARNING! Telkom LTE Night surfer

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oldtimerZA

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First Occruence:
So my family recently signed up for the new Telkom LTE service 50 + 50 gb.(http://www.telkom.co.za/today/shop/product/smartbroadband/)
So understanding that we get 50gb anytime and 50gb between 12:00AM - 7:00AM , we set up a meter on everyones pc at home to monitor who used which amounts of data and when.
We also set up the router to record the total data usage.

2 weeks in to September our cap runs out (for anytime data usage). We thought it was strange because no one uses much data during the day and we've scheduled our large downloads to happen after 12:00AM .

So I check all the different monitoring software I set-up and lo and behold we've used 58Gb(as recorded by the router). Understandably that would finish off our 50GB anytime data , so I check all the logs to see when this data had been used and 20GB (yes 20GB !!!!!) had been used between 12:00AM and 7:00AM, The night surfer times.

Pretty peeved at this point we decide to go see whats up , maybe there was a misunderstanding on our part.

So we speak to someone at a Telkom store directly.
We get told that "we have to reset our router after 12:00AM in order to use the night surfer data".

I have a few problems with this:
1) At no point were we made aware that this was necessary, not in the T&C , not mentioned during sign up, not mentioned via email/notification upon activation. For something this important one would think there would be notices for it.
2) Surely in this day and age you shouldn't have to switch off your router for different meterings.
3) If their system can monitor your connection to the byte and switch it off in real time , then it can dam well monitor the time the data was used and switch meterings.

So now we are internetless for the rest of the month because not only is Telkom inept at informing its customers ,it also likes to sneak in archaic business rules into it's products/services like
"when your anytime data is used up , then you can't access your night surfer data."

I made this post as a warning to anyone else who signs up for the Telkom LTE service .
One day South Africa will have a half decent ISP , that day is not today though.

Final Straw:

Apologies for the necro post.
But I just received my bill from Telkom to the tune of R2800 for the R699 p/m contract.
It is the HomeOffice LTE 50GB R699 deal.
Signed up on the 29 Aug 2015.
As far as I'm aware .
What concerns me is that :
1) the billing is as follows:
HomeOffice LTE 50Gb 29Aug 15 - 03 Oct 15 R1360,01
HomeOffice LTE 50Gb 04 Oct 15 - 03 Nov 15 R1139,47

So not only are these incorrect amounts( I signed up for the R699 p/m deal) But they are also different amounts per month.
On top of that I never received 50gb Night surfer data for the month of September.

2) The itemised billing shows per hour usage, but not the amounts used per hour. All the amoutns used are for R0.000

After seeing these issues We've decided to phone the Telkom help line.

6!!!! yes 6!!! calls later to 3 different numbers , getting told to phone a different person each time! We finally ge through to someone (who's names we have) who tells us the system is down and they can't help us.

HERE IS A WARNING TO ANYONE THINKING OF SIGNING UP FOR THE TELKOM LTE PACKAGE, DON'T !!!!!!!!
STAY FAR AWAY FROM TELKOM!
Not only have they consistently failed to fix Weltevreden Park's ADSL.
They now can't even correctly handle their LTE packages.

I will be complaining to http://www.asasa.org.za/ .
I will be creating negative Hello Peter reviews.
I will take further action if necessary.

I suggest Telkom reply ASAP!
 
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does the LTE get the free night surfer data? so don't you have data left on for anytime and from midnight?

I reckon the rebooting the router is BS. speak to someone else since I cant imagine everyone is rebooting at midnight.
 
Thats the problem.
We should have data left over , as we haven't used "20GB" of it.
But according to Telkom we've hit our 50GB anytime cap.

I've escalated the issue with them and have proof of our usage.

I also think it's BS , yet another way Telkom is trying to worm it's way out of actually taking responsibility and providing payed-for services.
 
No you don't need to reboot the router, I used to schedule my downloads after 12h00 with Telkom mobile and always used my night surfer data.
 
Grasmuis said:
No you don't need to reboot the router, I used to schedule my downloads after 12h00 with Telkom mobile and always used my night surfer data.
Click to expand...

Good to know.
Now I'm definintely pissed off and will go see said Telkom store again this weekend.
 
Creating a profile for the sim on the telkom site helps to get a quick view of what Telkom says you have remaining for both Anytime and Night Surfer.
 
MickZA said:
Have you taken uploaded data in addition to downloaded into consideration?
Click to expand...

Yup, the metering I set up records both upload and download. (in fact it records any data coming into/out of the computer network connections. all network connections in total, so that 58GB includes ANY data, local traffic included, so the actual Telkom data usage should be less than that by a small amount).

Fudzy said:
Isn't it from 11-5am

http://www.telkom.co.za/sites/docum...SmartInternet_Promo_Terms_and__Conditions.pdf

Point 2, section t
Click to expand...

either way the downloads only happened at 12:00AM - 1:00AM

ChewBakka said:
Creating a profile for the sim on the telkom site helps to get a quick view of what Telkom says you have remaining for both Anytime and Night Surfer.
Click to expand...
will do so tonight.
 
I signed up for the 100Gb + 100Gb LTE deal at the beginning of this month and set all my big downloads to run from 12am - 7am and have had no problems, all that data comes of my night surfer amount, no need to reset the router and my router and machine are both on 24/7.
 
WesleyR said:
I signed up for the 100Gb + 100Gb LTE deal at the beginning of this month and set all my big downloads to run from 12am - 7am and have had no problems, all that data comes of my night surfer amount, no need to reset the router and my router and machine are both on 24/7.
Click to expand...

Excellent , thats good to know. I'll take my evidence and refute the case this weekend.
 
What metering software are you using?

If it's not setup as a gateway for all the devices to pass traffic through, it will not be accurate.

It needs to sit behind your Router, but before every other device.
 
oldtimerZA said:
So we speak to someone at a Telkom store directly.
We get told that "we have to reset our router after 12:00AM in order to use the night surfer data".
Click to expand...

Use their own BS logic against them.
To the telkom twit that told you that, by the same token then if you reset the router at 12 and dont reset it at 0700 it should just use the night data during the day. lol

If they can monitor it effectively on one end they sure can on the other.

;)
 
SauRoNZA said:
What metering software are you using?

If it's not setup as a gateway for all the devices to pass traffic through, it will not be accurate.

It needs to sit behind your Router, but before every other device.
Click to expand...

Only have 3 pc's connected to the router(switched off the routers wifi and only allow LAN connections) and I've installed networx(https://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/) on each computer.
 
Sneeky said:
Use their own BS logic against them.
To the telkom twit that told you that, by the same token then if you reset the router at 12 and dont reset it at 0700 it should just use the night data during the day. lol

If they can monitor it effectively on one end they sure can on the other.

;)
Click to expand...

Never thought of that at the time :P dammit.

I wanted to install Gargoyle on the router(https://www.gargoyle-router.com/).
But alas the router doesn't support hese kinds of things.
 
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