Don't Get Vodacom 3g!

I got it in May. It was brilliant. For about 3 weeks. When it worked it worked great! ( I came from dial up).

Then there were problems. Every month. Service was pretty good though. I had a very helpful technician come to my house and all complaints were reacted to promptly.

It seemed as though they were retuning things. Service would just bomb out. Irritating, but not the end of the world.Until last month when there was NOTHING for 2 days. I phoned in and requested cancellation. I was told someone would be in touch. I got an apology SMS promising a R50 credit...That's all.

Then at the end of August my laptop died. I bought a new one on 31/8.

On 8/9 I got an SMS telling me I had used 96% of my Gig. I was surprised to say the least. In previous months I had resorted to downloading mildly interesting things to try and use my allowance. And I still never hit it.

I phoned the helpline and complained. My connection had also been incredibly slow the previous day...

I was told that someone would contact me. Someone did, on Friday 9/9. I was told to check for spyware using the MS download. The computer already had Norton on it and both came up negative.

I phoned again on the Monday because I had recieved another SMS telling me my time was up. I reported the fact that there was no malware on my computer. The agent said that it would be best if the person who had last spoken to me made contact again....I then asked what my usage was,as my dashboard which has always been within a couple of percent,was showing 620 odd MB. I was told that the usage couldn't be seen but I was looking at a bill of over a grand.... compared to the 600 bucks I never use fully! I disconnected the VODACOM 3G piece of junk!

Since Monday I have been using my MTN cellphone as a modem. I have played with a combination of GPRS and dial up( since I have many unused/carryover minutes). The GPRS is about as quick as Vodacom 3G. I don't recommend the dialup,but I have seen slower on V3G.

I am still waiting for someone to contact me. I tried to call again this afternoon. I listened to music 3 times until I was cut off. I'm going to tell my bank to reject the debit from Vodacom tomorrow. Maybe then they'll react...

I wish I had never bought the contract. I feel ripped off.

Buddy said:

I got it in May. It was brilliant. For about 3 weeks. When it worked it worked great! ( I came from dial up).

Then there were problems. Every month. Service was pretty good though. I had a very helpful technician come to my house and all complaints were reacted to promptly.

It seemed as though they were retuning things. Service would just bomb out. Irritating, but not the end of the world.Until last month when there was NOTHING for 2 days. I phoned in and requested cancellation. I was told someone would be in touch. I got an apology SMS promising a R50 credit...That's all.

Click to expand...

I have had my 3G contract since early Feb and there have been some teething problems - but that is to be expected of any new system as they fine tune. At least Vodacom recognised their problem and offered some compensation for the inconvenience!

Buddy said:

I was told to check for spyware using the MS download. The computer already had Norton on it and both came up negative.

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Have you checked that you do not have Windows or anti-virus updates enabled - I got caught with this and it also chowed up a months usage in less than a week?

Buddy said:

Since Monday I have been using my MTN cellphone as a modem. I have played with a combination of GPRS and dial up( since I have many unused/carryover minutes). The GPRS is about as quick as Vodacom 3G. I don't recommend the dialup,but I have seen slower on V3G..

Click to expand...

See test comparison results I did at this thread...
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?p=293981#post293981 - Remember your final download speed is possibly being limited by the server you are downloading from.

Buddy said:

I wish I had never bought the contract. I feel ripped off.

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Sorry you feel that way as I think most of the other forumites (myself included) have managed to sort out the teething problems and are now happy with the system. Hope you resolve your problems.

this month too for me something weird is going on... my bandwidth indicators, dashboard and DUmeter both say im on 500 (its only the 15th) and yesterday i got an sms from vodacom to say 96 percent.... WHAT THE HELL. and no there is no malicius software hanging around here...

kvi, do you think the SMS was pre-mature? Is anyone else seeing this?

Buddy, I'm sure we can sort this out. If you PM me your details and I'll contact you directly and put you in contact with someone in your area that can sort your setup out.

vodacom3g said:

Buddy, I'm sure we can sort this out. If you PM me your details and I'll contact you directly and put you in contact with someone in your area that can sort your setup out.

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Thanks. You have PM.

Buddy said:

Thanks. You have PM.

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To which I have had no reaction...I am still not using my Vodacom datacard.At the rate the usage was being racked up I would be looking at a bill in the region of R2.5k as opposed to R600!

What really sucks is that once your Gig is used up the Vodacom site doesn't give you any usage data.


This message comes courtesy of MTN GPRS. I have not changed anything on my computer and I left my MTN GPRS connection open for 24 hours. No unexplained usage on the data log. Which rules out spyware/automatic updates etc.

And still nobody has called back from Vodacom. World class...

Buddy, you're right. I stuffed up. Somehow though I passed your details onto the regional guys but can't find anything in my outbox. Will get onto it immediately.

vodacom3g said:

Buddy, you're right. I stuffed up. Somehow though I passed your details onto the regional guys but can't find anything in my outbox. Will get onto it immediately.

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Thanks for the call V3G. It happens...

I've lost your contact details so I can't contact you directly.

Anyway someone contacted me on Wednesday last week after our chat. I agreed to go through to Vodaworld so that my computer could be checked. An appointment was made for Thursday.

A chap in the Data help centre checked out my machine. He couldn't find any reason for the excessive usage. Let me reiterate at this point that I am no IT guru. What he could tell me however,correlated with my own experience.

I asked how the query could be escalated. After a phonecall we were joined by another chap from the helpdesk.

The guys decided to look at a log. After some time they told me that the system was down and they would have to get back to me. I asked if it would be possible to contact them. No way except through the helpdesk. But don't worry! We will contact you today or tomorrow and someone will come to you. That was Thursday...

It's now Tuesday...

This message is being brought to you by MTN,The better connection.

I am still using my cellphone on MTN GPRS to connect as I have lost all faith in Vodacom 3G. Everything about it sucks mightily! How do I cancel my contract?

Im speaking to a real lot of people having troubles with the 3G network. You try chat to them online, but they keep timing out

I am also having incredible hassle with the Vodacom 3G service (accessed through a Vodafone Mobile Connect card).

Endless Cannot find server/Page cannot be displayed. In addition, even when the service is working it is definitely slower than dial-up for all short interactions e.g. browsing a forum such as this one.

Luckily I am on a '0G' contract basis, but I am now strongly considering demanding my money back for the PCMCIA card. At the moment, it's just not worth it. Vodacom you need to know this.

(I have a call in to 082-155 Ref: BN-CAHC-872RQ)

well,

I've had my 3G running for what seems like ages now. Only real problem I had was when I moved from Bellville to Plumbstead and went from having constantly 3bars on 3G to not even being able to connect with GPRS

But then, around a month later, I'm now getting constantly around 3-4bars 3G

oh ... won't mention this weekend though

When reality sets in

I finally sold my 3G card the other day, it was a happy day to remember.I currently use a Motorola phone C650 plugged into the Linux Fedora 4 which also occationaly has problems, but thats just the Vodacom network going down again, everyone knows that.

Always keep in mind that 3G wireless access is NOT a ADSL or similar substitute, 3G is for when you on the go, its portability.

Dont ask for stability like any fixed wire access. Vodacom does not have the bandwidth or backbone to carry all the countrys 3G bandwidth and Voice simulatneusly. As more and more phones start to become video enabled, including video sms's etc etc. one thing is a given, service degragation and more instability.

What will result is an increase in data fees in the long run and an increase in fixed wire adoption as the goverment forces Telkom to reduce their rates.

My recomendation: if you can afford it, go home DSL (R 500 incl everything) and for when you are on the move, 3G/gprs using either pay as you go or the 500Mb contract option (R350 per month).

Do not ever for a moment believe that 3G is a replacement for your ADSL. When it comes to mission critical data having to be sent via email or ftp, do NOT consider 3G, it will let you down, and when you least expect it.

Cheers for now.

Rusty!

Thank goodness our company is paying for my 3G. I wouldn't have coped with this if I had to pay. If they can just stabilize the whole thing then we'll all go away from this moanfest this forum has turned into ...

Seems we are having a recurring of:
- connection failures
- DNS
- SMTP
- download throughput

Btw, now it seems they have got the uploads fixed. I'm getting 7 KBps consistantly.

Cancellation of contracts:
------------------------

I think it is getting increasingly important for us to figure out how to get out of the 24 month contract.

Is there a way to pay off the pro-rata used data card?

Are there any legal loopholes to void the contract if Vodacom stuffs up for x number of days?

Are there any legal ways to claim back money for downtime and lost income?


It seems that some people are happy with the service. Good for them. For the others there must be some form of relief?

Maybe if Vodacom is legally forced to cancel a number of contracts they will attempt to increase the quality of service as well as buying a bigger harddrive for the SMTP server?

VMS

There's a couple of legal types on the forums. Have a look in the ICASA report thread in the Announcements forum. There are a few people mentioning they are lawyers. Maybe they can help out ...

VMS said:

Cancellation of contracts:
------------------------
Maybe if Vodacom is legally forced to cancel a number of contracts they will attempt to increase the quality of service as well as buying a bigger harddrive for the SMTP server?

VMS

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I was told that Vodacom would cancel any 3G contract at their expense, but there was no talk of any compensation of any kind - with the exception of the R50 credit we'll all get for last month's woopsies!

Seems rather weird that they would force their customers away instead of fixing the problem.

There are a lot of compotent people working at Vodacom both in Customer Service, and on the technical side of the network, just seems strange that they cannot relsove an issue once and for all!

Fortunately I have my own smtp server, so that issue hasn't really affected me, but the constant connectivity issues, DNS issues, and the quality of the coverage are becoming a real nusance, and it's about time they sort these niggles out.

At present they are getting a lot of bad publicity on this forum regarding these problems, but it won't take long for the news to spread to the papers, and other online publications, and then they will be sitting with an even bigger problem.

It's quite strange that they are so quiet on these current problems (maybe because they just don't know how to fix them or what's even causing them?) usually they are very transparent in terms of problems, and the possible resolutions thereof - makes you think???

I think what they forget is that this is a service that we pay for, and not something we get for free, and as mentioned earlier in the thread, we keep up our side of the contract by paying our bills timeously, the least they can do is make sure the system runs smoothly for as long as possible. I think it would be silly to expect of them to have 100% uptime all the time, and I don't think any is expecting this of them, but these problems are unfortunately happening more often then not...

Should this be a capacity related problem, surely after nearly 1 year of 3G on their network, they can project usage/up take, and make the necessary plans before hand and upgrade capacity, instead of waiting for everything to fall over?

I'm sure they'll eventually fix the problem, unfortunately the only question is, for how long will it remain "fixed"?

I suspect Vodacom are not able to handle the huge increase internally of their infrastructure. They also have a relativelly complex setup, and I know last months problems were as a result of some security hardware malfunctioning. I also know that this month they have had problems with, in essence, running out of IP address's to be allocated to connecting clients. Although this was "supposedly" only on WAP. I then think that they are implementing untested solutions, or solutions that have not been tested to the scale of use that they are intended for.

Vodacom were very good in the beginning with open communication, but it seems that this has now fallen by the way side. I have asked/complained/begged time and time again for carry over of data, the fact that I have not used my full bandwith is a direct result of Vodacom not providing the service I contracted them to provide. Had they been in a position to provide the service, I am sure I would have exceeded 1 gig this month! Now, instead, I will loose my "extra" bandwidth on Friday.

I think it is about high time that Vodacom stop implementing new sites and/or features and/or hardware and get things stable again! It just seems that no-one is making a huge enough stink to get any reaction. Perhaps an article in the press and/or ITWeb would get someone thinking, but I doubt it.

and the fact that v3g's last comment on this topic was :

20-09-2005, 09:08 PM

is a sign of the degradation of service and feedback from Vodacom

It sounds as if the faeces has hit the rotation oscilator at Vodacom - maybe V3G was too open about certain problems, and that old Post Office/Telkom mentality (not referring specifically to V3G, but the entire organisation) is seeping through again - hence the lack of communication from his side?

Maybe it is time that someone brings it to the attention of an online publication or a newspaper the ongoing problems that we as end users keep experiencing, and maybe then as, Harley79 says will there be some action. Enough noise was made here for even Telkom to react to some of the bad press.

Vodacom have been much more transparent than any of the other operators when it's come to problems, so it's rather strange that they are so quiet now...

But these problems are becoming ridiculous, if it's GPRS not working, then the 3G service is down, if not that, then the smtp server or DNS server issues, then there's the disconnect issue (although for now that seems to have been resolved) then there's the patchy coverage - and that's in areas where this supposed to be covered - we are not talking the middle of the Karoo, but in certain parts of Johannesburg!

Let's see if we get any answers - I'm sure we will - but you never know...