Seriously loving my cellphone company right now.
PRERATE ALL THE THINGS
So, to whichever unfortunate person ends up with my support ticket for this, I wish you luck.
P.S. I was told there’s more context needed, so: look at the bundle type in the top bar, and then at the used/avaiable counts. What happened (my guess, but I’m pretty sure) is that when I bought it, their rating system preburned all the data I’ve already done this month (under previous rollover bundle).
Alternative title: what happens when you buy things that are licensed/run per TCP connection it can maintain.
hageshii% date; elegua; date
Fri Feb 15 22:08:41 SAST 2013
Linux elegua 2.6.32-5-amd64 #1 SMP Sun May 6 04:00:17 UTC 2012 x86_64The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
No mail.
Last login: Fri Feb 15 20:44:49 2013 from 41.10.98.194
elegua% Write failed: Broken pipe
Shared connection to elegua.za.net closed.
Fri Feb 15 22:18:47 SAST 2013
10 minutes almost to the dot and my connection is forcefully severed, presumably for inactivity. I wonder how many inadvertent breakages this can cause. It’s certainly annoying. Thanks, Vodacom.
(Yes, I know I can VPN around this, or use mosh, or or or. Unfortunately none of those were quick to do because I hadn’t booted this box in quite a while, and Expensive-with-expiring-bytes-G connection is better used on other things than this)
And this is what the trace looks like:
Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev 1. 192.168.43.1 0.0% 131 1.5 9.4 1.1 211.2 27.6 2. 10.17.7.11 0.0% 131 54.6 327.0 38.5 5456. 844.4 3. 10.242.249.2 0.8% 131 47.9 314.3 42.1 5400. 823.9 4. 10.113.228.1 5.4% 131 48.8 309.2 42.4 5346. 832.0 5. 41.192.248.18 12.3% 131 55.7 247.6 39.4 5290. 790.0 6. vc-196-207-44-134.3g.vodacom.co.za 7.7% 131 52.8 294.0 39.4 5234. 815.3 7. 41.0.4.1 10.0% 131 49.7 249.9 36.6 5178. 764.8 8. 10.118.46.10 7.8% 130 423.0 474.4 210.7 5155. 851.3 9. te-9-2.car5.London1.Level3.net 34.1% 130 483.0 461.4 204.0 4123. 762.5 10. ae-52-52.csw2.London1.Level3.net 24.0% 130 239.5 502.6 216.1 5009. 882.5 11. ae-57-222.ebr2.London1.Level3.net 24.0% 130 231.0 409.9 216.0 4010. 614.4 12. ae-22-22.ebr2.Frankfurt1.Level3.net 22.5% 130 237.8 473.7 216.9 5906. 897.6 13. ae-72-72.csw2.Frankfurt1.Level3.net 22.5% 130 250.2 445.7 219.9 5851. 793.7 ae-92-92.csw4.Frankfurt1.Level3.net 14. ??? 15. 195.16.162.254 32.6% 130 247.4 406.6 223.9 4726. 723.5 16. hos-bb2.juniper1.rz1.hetzner.de 74.4% 130 233.1 740.9 225.0 5682. 1218. 17. hos-tr2.ex3k9.rz1.hetzner.de 18.6% 130 339.2 491.0 221.3 5626. 841.9 18. elegua.za.net 1.6% 130 343.7 508.1 226.2 5571. 829.2
Hi-kwality packets.
With my DSL and everything (switch, RB750, DSL modem, HP Microserver) being struck by lightning this week, I’m presently using my 3G for a bit of access. Just to ensure I don’t trigger any massive out-of-bundle charges, I checked my remaining cap quickly so that I can then run a rough mental allocation of it all for the next while. Then I saw this:
“Hang on a minute,” I thought as I read the first block’s data values, “that should be closer to 1.7GB remaining.”
Then I scrolled down, saw the ‘forfeited’ counter, and began wondering whether these companies could be forced to stop making forfeiting part of their contracts. It’s truly not like this is a technical problem. This is a business decision they’ve made to let bandwidth you’ve bought artificially expire.
A quick bit of math: assuming I use ~300MB a month (this appears to be the general level of data I use, based on a quick checking of my phone’s stats), and that I’ve had this contract for 22 months now, and at the R268.99 I’ve been paying for the bundle each month:
So that’s R3700 of “forfeit”, for no reason other than someone decided it’d be a good way to make money. And, as far as I know, all the operators in this country do this. For the less technical readers: as I mentioned before, there’s no technical reason this happens. It’s just an entry in some database, and can be updated. If anything, maintaining an expiry time on data probably leads to more technical issues than they’d otherwise have.
To compare, this would be like anyone buying up a bunch of things (toilet paper, toothpaste, whatever), and the storekeeper then removing it from your home if you haven’t used in soon enough.