Data Roaming ****

<p> I have just returned from a trip to discover my ‘bill so far’ is over R11000. I travel frequently and have always used the sms roamer service, activated/deactivated by sms. This year I discovered that that service no longer works but only after I got a bill for R300 for 20MB (February) and R700 for 45MB (April) when I had activated the service and received confirmation it was activated. It was then ‘deactivated’ when I was already on the plane. I followed-up with Vodacom and was told that they are migrating certain customers and that the only way to activate it is to call them – which makes no sense for those of us needing to use our phones to be in touch with families/transport on arrival back home. I wrote off the experience to (my) inexperience. But this time, I was paying attention. On arrival in Brazil, I received a sms from Vodacom advising me of the roaming costs – R23p/min for international calls and R17.50 per MB of data – high but at least transparent. I immediately disconnected the majority of apps from using cellular data. In one week, I used less than 60 minutes of call time and about 100MB of data – how can this add up to R11000?!? Yesterday I called customer service but was told since my line is ‘open’ (contract) and the usage took place in the current billing period (September), they cannot view any information (not useful!). They advised they would escalate to technical but no follow-up yet. A quick review of this site, shows me that this is a common occurrence and complete ****. As a loyal ****il recently) Vodacom customer, I would like these charges reversed immediately and assurance of when we can expect a working and affordable roaming offering before considering alternative service providers.</p>