Vodacom and their useless Data Bundles

Last month I purchased a 2GB Data Bundle (Standard) for my prepaid number from Vodacom which

cost a hefty R389 the reason I purchased it was because I had a serious deadline for a website I was

building and needed the data as I wasn't at home or at the office where I have access to an ADSL line, now I purchased 2GB for the Rand/MB rate , I don't know who in their right mind wants to spend

R2 per MB especially when you're uploading lots of media or downloading it. 19 cents per MB is a lot better than R2 and unfortunately you need to spend over R300 for a bundle to get that rate. Granted that

Vodacom will be giving up to 50% more data for free on Bundles under 3GB starting on the 1st of May , which is quite nice you can read about it here , here and here , I will tell you something that will make you think twice about that.

When you're buying a data bundle from Vodacom , think carefully how you're going to use it because for you to make it worth while you have to use it all , when the time comes for it to expire (which can be confusing to figure out) you will lose every last kilobyte you didn't use and all your Rand you spent buying them. Take me for example two days from now I'm going to lose about 1.9GB of data , as it will expire and there's not a thing I can do about it. I want to try to use it all up if I can but so far I've only been able to use about 100MB from the bundle I purchased , mainly for that emergency I had with the deadline. 95% of my bundle will certainly go for waste and so will 95% of my money. In a fair world , or what I think should be fair , it should cost me R19.45 for the 100MB I used. Instead it will cost me R368,55 for the 100MB I used which equates to R3.70 per MB, fantastic deal from Vodacom. I will never buy a bundle ever again. If you're like me who thought you could extend your expire window by adding more data from buying another bundle you're wrong. And it's easy to have that misconception , if you're used to buying more prepaid data for your ADSL line , you will know that it wont expire at a certain date and be rendered void. I purchase prepaid data from Webafrica or Afrihost and that NEVER expires , and it costs much less. I should have just used the standard rate of R2 per MB and I wouldn't have been in this ridiculous situation with Vodacom, I've phoned them about options on how I can keep my data and extend my expire window and they just kept telling me how it will expire and it's how the network operates and I can't do a damn thing about it.

Here's a screenshot from my phone of my Data Balance

See how I've added 5MB , which has a completely separate expire date. Who ever thought that was cool should be pointed at and stared down in public constantly.

Why don't they let you extend the time for your bundle to expire? Why can't the support guys help me out? Why are they being so stuck up?

On the other hand with the "Advanced Data Bundles" Vodacom offers , which includes the "Out of bundle rate = In Bundle Rate" feature. it costs R4099 to get a rate of 20c per MB , how in Sam Hill does that work? Yes yes it's twice as fast as standard , cool awesome.
R389 for 19c/MB versus R4099 for 20c/MB . Yeah...
I'm not sure if I'm correct but according to this Vodacom states “The offer applies, regardless of whether the customer subscribes to a Data Contract or buys a once-off bundle to use on an ad-hoc basis and is available on both the Broadband Advanced and the Broadband Standard services,”
Excuse me if i'm wrong here , what the hell , the only "feature" the Advanced Data Bundle would offer is the out of bundle rate = in bundle rate

Take a look at this
According to what Vodacom said from the 1st of May things will look like this:
Using 2GB as the bundle

• For Advanced it will cost 23c/MB (if it costs R599 for 2GB adding 512MB free(2048+512=2560)
• For Standard it will cost 17c/MB (if it costs R389 for 2GB adding 307MB free(2048+307=2355)

If you're not going going out of your bundle which one would you pick? Remember both will be 14.4Mbps since someone(Vodacom) said
"available on both the Broadband Advanced and the Broadband Standard services"

Seriously why should there even be a charge for going out of your bundle? Is it because None of the ADSL ISP's offer the amazing benefit of going out of your bundle? Because I prefer those other ISP's who can let me buy my data at a far better rate with no flippin' out of bundle rate and no bundle expire date. Heck you can get unlimited data from Mweb and Afrihost for less. Thank you Vodacom for wasting my money you greedy rapist.

Follow Me CrimsonZA
complain to this guy


Peace.