One mistake and R13000 later...

<p>Dear Vodacom,</p> <p><br />It seems like I have become yet another victim of a gigantic data bill from you after inadvertently going into out-of-bundle rates.</p> <p><br />I do understand fully that you warn your customers about this and I WAS aware of it, but mistakes can happen oh so easily (in my case by plugging my phone into my computer just to recharge its power for a few hours and forgetting that connection sharing is on and my computer’s wifi being overridden automatically by the phone’s 4G and doing many gigabytes of downloads in the process at that very moment without me knowing!)</p> <p><br />One simple mistake now had my phone locked. I thought, that’s very good at least, seeing as my provider is protecting me from a completely excessive bill that would be leagues cheaper if myself (or actually YOU guys) bought the data bundles for the data ad-hoc, seeing as it’s incredibly obvious going so many gigs over the limit that one would not EVER want to use as much data willingly. You all know this.</p> <p><br />Now, logging onto my Vodacom profile online, I see that my bill for August so far is R13000+!!! I normally pay about R500 p/m. This is ludicrous. I mean, I have that money, but I’ll need to cancel a holiday, but I’m absolutely dreading what happens to poorer families in this country who cannot afford that.</p> <p><br />Sure, we know the conditions, but the big spike-filled pit that is out-of-bundle rates can so easily be fallen into by a simple honest mistake and your efforts to protect people whom I am SURE you know would not actually WANT to spend that much, are quite frankly shocking.</p> <p><br />Just putting yourselves in my (and others like me’s) position for a second and taking this fact into account that you know that NO ONE would willingly spend this much (2600% more than the average month for the last 5 years with you!!!</p> <p><br />I thought you’d phone me at least and going: “Sir, something’s wrong here!”) yet have no systems or desire in place to protect us, is just simple exploitation of your customers and taking away many thousands of rands of our hard earned cash.</p> <p><br />Every single one of us, including you guys at Vodacom, would be as upset as I am right now if this happened to you. No one wants this. Please let me know if we can remedy this. Others reading this, is there any part of the consumer protection act that can help me?</p> <p><br />A deeply deeply upset customer of yours,</p> <p>Andre</p>