Has white collar crime found a security hole in the cellphone industry?

[Pap_sak]

I will never go of pay as you go for the above reasons. Dealing with them (all of them it seems) is just too much stress - much prefer dealing with telkom, who, touch wood, have been excellent so far.

[Dave A]

I will never go of pay as you go for the above reasons.

Do you get a list of what you have been charged for with pay-as-you-go? If not, you're even more vulnerable because you wouldn't even know if these charges are being raised.

I don't see how pay-as-you-go protects you, unless you operate with absolutely no credits on the phone at all.

[OnlineMarketing]

Quote Originally Posted

To be fair all business is about charging what you can for your service and it is a rare businessman that doesn't use opportunity to charge more, but do you know who is really at fault, it isn't the corporates or government it's us for letting them get away with it and for being too lazy to check our statements

Are you encouraging underhand tactics like Vodacom are using here! This is like quoting one price for a job and charging another without confirming with the customer first, if this was discussed with your customer then there wouldn't be a hassle. I would love to read the Vodacom ethics training manual and see what they say about "honest" customer communications.

Ian i am shocked you are implying i condone cheating i clearly stated i DO NOT, did you read my post? Actually the point i was making was that having been in business for 20 years i have seen how people do business and let me tell you it isn't by not charging as much as they can when they can, if you disagree with that you are in cloud cuckoo land! The distinction i made was between big corporates who just need to program something into their system to raise an extra 50 million rand and small business who realises thatcharging an extra 10% will allow that guy to buy his kid a new toy.



Frankly, it will probably have to go viral to have any effect.

SEO won't cut it. There's no official way to jump the issue above the customer care roadblock (probably for reasons best covered by Andy).
There is no financial incentive to track down the problem... unless it starts significantly hurting their public image.

Dave, yes SEO will cut it! If you want it to.
Regenerate your post on a decent url, copy and paste it. By a decent url i mean ideally a root domain or a subfolder of a site you already have. Lets tweak it to suit Google(ie use some vital keywords in it like "Vodacom cheats","Vodacom thieves", "Vodacom stealing" or less important phrases. I will crank some link building. Get the site ranked, send a press release out to the major tv stations, they will be all over it like a rash.

You may not have the appetite for this but i can assure you SEO will cut it with the aid of a good old press release.

Alternatively post it and Tweet and pay one of the many services that are around to retweet it this alone would get it ranked. Then again float it in front of the press.

Alternatively do nothing and your story joins the long queue of similar stories that float away inter the ether whilst the practise continues.

[Dave A]

Onlinemarketing, I think we're seeing the same thing but we're talking at crossed purposes. My point on SEO not cutting it was I knew the thread was poorly optimised to do well on relevant high impact search keywords and phrase - except perhaps "white collar crime", "security hole" and "cellphone industry" and even then, less than optimum for each separately. Any combination of those phrases might do well, but then we're talking long tail which also equals low volume.

But ultimately that is what this thread is about - cellphone companies being used for the perfect crime - and their total apathy about it.

Maybe the answer is to start another thread which pulls all the bits together enough to shake Vodacom into action...

[IanF]

Ian i am shocked you are implying i condone cheating i clearly stated i DO NOT, did you read my post? Actually the point i was making was that having been in business for 20 years i have seen how people do business and let me tell you it isn't by not charging as much as they can when they can, if you disagree with that you are in cloud cuckoo land! The distinction i made was between big corporates who just need to program something into their system to raise an extra 50 million rand and small business who realises thatcharging an extra 10% will allow that guy to buy his kid a new toy.

Online, I know exactly where you are coming from. Of course we would all like to charge the highest we can. What I am saying you can't quote someone R100 for a job then charge him R150 without negotiating this with the customer, that in my book is not ethical. What some businesses do is also build a good business on being the lowest priced company in the sector and make up for it in volume, that is also a very successful model for a business. One concept I like is the "moat around the business" were you have an advantage over your competitors and constantly work this advantage. Think coke if you like the taste it is hard to change.

Anyway lets not derail this thread too much and start a new thread on the best business model.

[Dave A]

Aha!

It has been a most informative morning. It's going to take a little while for me to knock together a post that covers what has happened, but briefly:
It involves overbilling from a WASP
Vodacom is aware of it
And Vodacom has been trying to correct it - which is the reason for the hijinks on my account I've been seeing.

I'll try to do something more comprehensive later (in fact, an official news release from Vodacom would be most useful - I'm having to rely on notes from a couple of conversations).

But in the meantime, may I express my thanks to Nazeer of Vodacom customer care and Nicky (sp?) of Vodacom accounts. You were both truly helpful.

[OnlineMarketing]

What I am saying you can't quote someone R100 for a job then charge him R150 without negotiating this with the customer, that in my book is not ethical

Agreed Ian

Glad you made progress Dave, i still agree that the big boys often do business like Bernie Madoff but in this instance it seems there is an explanation

[Dave A]

I said earlier my thoughts on this being fraud were speculative.

Through a couple of discussions with Vodacom representatives today, I am advised that certain irregularities in the raising of WASP charges for August 2010 had come to the attention of Vodacom. Essentially this resulted in some clients being overbilled and requiring credits to be passed to correct this overbilling.

These credits were passed on or about 4th December 2010. However there was a glitch and the values passed were not what they should have been. So to clear this they reversed the December run on or about 17th January and there has been another run of credits passed on or about 4th February.

As I say, this was what I gleaned from conversations as the rough gist of what had actually happened.

Good on you Vodacom, but I'm still a little shaken by what all this implies.

So one or more WASP operators was found "overbilling" in August 2010.
And as one of the "overbilled" clients getting a credit, that means I didn't even notice.

Yep, my speculation was a little off the mark - by just how much I leave you to decide.
Maybe the verdict depends on your view of "overbilling" - by the sounds of things there was quite a lot of it.

At least it seems Vodacom is prepared to do something about it

[Fanie]

The bottom line is Vodacom doesn't care. I was semi involved in a crime taking place in JHB where the police (for what that's worth) could have tracked the criminal and cought him in the act. Vodacom refused on the grounds that they have to protect the individual's right. (Criminals have rights, victims doesn't in SA).

BUT IF YOU PAY then you can rape your children's privacy and know exactly where they are any time you want.

I got ripped by Vodacom recently when using international roaming - less than a few mins cost me more than R180, I calculated around R30 per minute after being told it cost R6 per minute, this was from Mozabique. I bought a local card there for 100 metica (R20) and talked longer to SA than the R180 did.

Vodacom (MTN) was found to be 7 times more expensive than need be by an independant survey. The gov doesn't care, the more they get...

Why aren't phone companies just phone companies - now they are into rugby and gawd knows what all instead of just being the best they can be at what they do.

Money - and maintaining your monopoly.
In SA you are considered a good business person if you manage to screw someone.

[Cat]

What an interesting read indeed. I wouldn't even know where to start....

@Fanie - it is sad in this situation that the criminal could not be tracked. As with anything in South Africa there is red tape and protocol and (being married to a crime intelligence officer) in certain circumstances service providers are legally obligated to comply with police request for information BUT the severity of the crime and type of information given will decide this. Please do not think that I am saying that some crimes are worse than others because crime is crime - however reality is that in many circumstances red tape hinders the process or delays it until perhaps it is too late.

@Dave A - As for Vodacom and other service providers, I am glad that the matter was resolved. I had a very similar experience with Nashua Mobile and cancelled my debit order to them and now pay on receipt of statement and invoice. Needless ot say they request monthly that I set up a new debit order but I would rather do it myself monthly than have to go through what added up to HOURS of calls and holding for call center agents. Ha ha now I think about it I was in a situation where the consultant asked me to hold but obviously didn't realize they hadn't physically put me on hold then proceeded to go one about these stupid clients.... blah blah fish paste..... and then cut me off when I commented on it.

It is common knowledge that South Africans are subjected to steep charges by service providers - in comparison to international standards. I know I have mentioned this in a few posts but I really do hope this consumer act proves its worth. My suspicion is that there will THAT MANY complaints that the 'consumer act' will have it's own complaints line and another stream of call centers, repetitive "hold" music and automated answering services. (if there isn't one already)