MTN trying to use POPI act as a refusal to explain outrageous data charges on OUR account!

We first noticed the issue of one of our member’s monthly bill going up in total significantly in October 2017. Our corporate cellphones were due for upgrades in October/November 2017, so when we went in to the MTN store in Cavendish to upgrade one of these phones on 31 October 2017, we asked about the issue of the escalating bill. The lady there couldn’t really tell what the problem was with the account, so she advised we switch both users to packages with more data. We immediately switched the upgraded account to a package with more data and decided on a similar package for our member with the data issue, but we left it to our member to go select his own new phone when he upgraded – expecting him to go within the next week, but he is on the road all day, so he did not manage to get to a branch for a while. The price rise charges in October were put down to him needing to send a few more images than normal, so using a little more data and going over his limit, incurring some pretty nasty charges. It seemed a little excessive, but nobody seemed able to give us a definitive answer what had happened… everything pointed to our member using too much data and it looked like it was his fault. I can’t remember the exact visit, but the attendant did offer to put a cap on this member's data in the meantime and we said yes please. (I think that was when we collected the other upgraded phone on 3 November 2017). We capped both accounts thinking this would help… yet the data charges not only continued, but they continued to double! The bills for this phone were getting worse and totally out of hand and we were more insistent on getting to the bottom of the matter… With the December holidays in between we finally went back in to MTN Cavendish on 2018/01/08 and asked them to put this member on a month to month package with more data, forget about a new handset, and double checked that there was a cap on this account's data to please help while this issue was continuing to spiral out of control with no end in sight! With all of this insane data usage (e.g. approximately 3 1/2 GIGS of data allegedy used on 2017/12/17 - at an out of package cost of R2,224.75!!!) We'd also like to point out that MTN only sent an sms to our member on 27 Dec 2017 and 8 January 2018 about his unusual data usage! The rate that we were unknowingly being charged for data by this stage, he'd have to be watching a movie every second day. Our user was insisting he wasn’t doing anything abnormal and MTN helpdesk (telephonic) advised on 23 January that he was subscribed to a company called Mira Networks / Kulaville and that he needs to unsubscribe (helpdesk log ref number 1- ********** 7254). We were also advised verbally by staff inside MTN Cavendish (I can’t remember the date) that if there was a subscription on his phone that this data cap would be of no use! [Wait… what???] He dialled the relevant numbers (*141*5#) to unsubscribe everything. He also unsubscribed from Mira Networks / Kulaville directly and he is still insisting that he never subscribed. We were getting no joy and no sense of urgency or responsibility to assist us with this… It seemed up to US to prove that we weren’t subscribed, as opposed to being MTN and Kulaville’s responsiblity to prove that we ever WERE actually subscribed. In fact after researching Mira Networks and Kulaville on the internet it appears that they REGUARLY do this to MTN users! We registered this issue with WASPA on 24 January 2018 and they asked us for the itemised billing, which we requested from MTN but they sent us the wrong information. This all required some more backwards and forwards until we got it right. We have now finally been given dates as “proof” that he was subscribed in a very backwards way and nobody seems willing to take this any further and are just accepting the word of Big Cat Networks!! Even WASPA have dropped the case at the word of Big Cat Networks. We’d really like to request MTN confirm this subscription, but none of us ever want to talk to them again (and if they supposedly don't keep records how can they help us prove otherwise anyway!?). But this brings us back to the original issue of data and, looking at this subscription, it goes back to 2013.04.30 though and, in any case, this STILL does not explain what suddenly started all the data madness though. By 09 February we decided enough was enough and we were ditching MTN. We phoned up to cancel our user’s contract and were advised to send an email to ********** at MTN (with the signed request and a copy of the Director’s ID) to request to migrate our user’s account to prepaid so that we can then transfer him to Vodacom. After numerous repeat requests to the retentions department and the 809 dept, we were asked to resend the copy of the ID so that they could process our request (this was on 2018.02.20). We finally got a response back on 2018.02.22 from their 809 dept asking us why we want to port (either they haven’t got access to our helpdesk records or the guy hadn’t looked). He said he'd get back to us... nope. Finally on further prompting on 2018.02.23 we received a response from them to let us know that we still have some minutes and data left to use on this month’s account. Seeing as that would be yet another waste we asked to migrate before midnight on 28 February. But no it gets better! It turns out that due to MTN’s (by now) unbelievable inefficiency we’ve gone into March’s billing period from 17 February and it would be a waste of minutes to move the account now. They have now migrated the phone and have lodged a query with the charges. (No response yet to that either, but they have already deducted the charges out of our bank account!) Honestly if we hadn’t just signed a contract for the other phone, we would transfer both phones away from MTN. We are beyond frustrated and really disappointed in how this issue has been dealt with and no resolution in sight. So upon figuring out that we were dealing with TWO separate issues we asked AGAIN for the breakdown of the data charges, what exactly caused it all and MTN are trying to tell us that they are unable to give us any further information by citing the POPI act: "Please be advised that we provided the content report (WASPA) in order to make it clear that it has nothing to do with your data usage. The “data usage” as per the invoice gets calculated once you’ve depleted the inclusive data bundle and 12.5GB of data was used at out of bundle rates of R0.99 per MB. We've also advised that we can only provide itemised billing and not the URL (website and application breakdown) report due the POPI act, we no longer provide these reports. Kindly note that the usage needs to monitored and tracked on the respective device that the sim card was last used in." They had previously stated: "As per the POPI act our access/systems has been decommissioned and we are unable to provide the URL (Website and application) report." So basically they’re telling us that they’re charging us for data and that we must just take their word for it that it was used and that they “can’t” keep records of how they calculated it (so then my response is how did they calculate the charges in the first place if they can’t prove it?). This is nonsense because the POPI act is about keeping our information safely away from OTHERS for us, but that we should have every right to access it upon request! They finally ported the number on March 3rd (although Vodacom still coulnd't access it on March 5th) so we can at least get one of our users away from them (having helped themselves via debit to the full oustanding balance from our account despite having a R4k cap on our service agreement). This whole situation is absolutely outrageous!