MTN South Africa is still ******** for out of bundle data on a brand new sim card

MTN South Africa is still charging for out of bundle data on a brand new sim card which has not opted in to the ****.

I purchased a prepaid sim card to evaluate mtn in the area as Telkom Mobile had bad signal here at home. I loaded R300 to buy data on the card and loaded their new app. The app rewarded me with 1GB of data plus all sorts of other data rewards. In total there was 2GB of data at my disposal, so I thought cool, no need to buy any of my own. The data connection here is awesome, and I thought it would be a viable alternative.

Through the night, I saw my monetary balance declining, so I went to check the out of bundle OPT-IN setting. It was off, meaning I shouldn't be charged for data. Over the next day, almost R100 disappeared from my account. I sent off an email to MTN customer care outlining this and wanting to know where all my money had gone.

I got an automated response saying the matter would be looked into. Almost a week later I got a response from MTN as follows: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Good day Mark,

We apologize for the delayed response.

Kindly note your airtime was use for internet connections/charges.Please advised to dial *136#ok option 4 to opt out,so your internet does not deplet from airtime when you do not have data bundles.

We trust that you find the above in order.

Kind Regards, Lettamaletjepe Mashego MTN SA

Reference Number: *** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Out of bundle data charges have been made ******* by iCCASA over a year ago and they made ALL the service providers make a use of an OPT-IN service rather than an OPT-OUT service.

The OPT-IN on the sim was sett to OFF, meaning that I would NOT be charged for data. I had over 2GB of data available which it seams was not used first.

MTN has already been fined millions by ICCASA for flaunting this regulation and that hasn't touched them it seams. I'm still waiting for a response to my reply, but I doubt it will arrive. I've heard on the g****vine that MTN has lost more than 20% of it's income as a result of having out of bundle stopped that it has been forced to adopt these rather unsavory practices.

If I had a contact for ICCASA I'd be sending them my complaint.

Please refund my money.