Telkom Mobile Charged for Data while still having free data available.

I moved 2 of my Cellphone accounts from CellC over to Telkom Mobile as they had excellent contract options available. One of the contracts has a 1GB monthly data as well as 10GB per month for the first 3 months as well as a unlimited Whattsapp data package.

This was excellent as we were going on holiday and was leaving our Wi-Fi environment at home. Within 3 days of being on holiday all my data using apps including Whattsapp stopped working on my phone. I did the enquiry about my data and received a sms confirming that I have more than 18GB of data left. After our holiday I received a bill with an extra amount of R500 for 5GB of data used in 3 days, this with the knowledge that the contract was supposed to be a top up type when you run out of airtime or data.

I contacted Telkom and after numerous questions and speaking to an online chat consultant it came down to this. The towns, Arniston and Onrusriver - Herm****, where we went on holiday had no Telkom Mobile coverage. This meant that the phone automatically switches over to the MTN network and then none of the data packages that are part of the contract works as it is just for the Telkom Mobile Network. The online chat agent did mention that according to him I am supposed to have 1GB data on all networks and then 1GB on Telkom Mobile networks but this is not the case. I was in a Twitter conversation with TelkomZA and they just said that they are continuously expanding their network but that does not help me.

We are now forced to pay an extra R500 as well as all the data we lost because we could not use it as we were not in a Telkom Mobile area. The first contract I opened at Telkom Mobile is a 500MB FreeMe contract and the limit on that account was automatically set at R0 as it is a Top Up type contract. The second one is a 1GB FreeMe contract and that account was automatically set to a limit of R500 which is also on a Top Up type contract. Why was the second contract limit set to R500 and also not R0.