With incidents of bill shock in mobile telecoms increasing exponentially with the migration of consumers from feature phones to smartphones, SA's operators have attempted to mitigate the problem - although increasing cases suggest to no avail.
The Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) says it is receiving "floods" of complaints from cellphone users who have received disproportionately large bills lately - something many blame on wrongful billing by their service provider.
Telkom Mobile says of all the queries or complaints around high bills that come in, only about 1% turn out to be due to the billing process. Most of them, says the operator, stem from international roaming and consumers being unaware of the tabs this can rack up.
Vodacom, SA's largest network by customer numbers, says it has undertaken to tackle bill shock "extensively" and with every channel at its disposal. According to Vodacom spokesperson Richard Boorman, the company's approach has included Q&As, instructional videos, tips on social media, in-store education, press and online releases, and seminars with consumer journalists.
Roaming bane
Boorman feels complaints around bill shock are actually subsiding, but analysts and ICASA indicate, overall in SA, this is not the case. He says often bill shock is caused by something as simple as automatic software updates being turned on, or pictures automatically uploading to cloud storage. "People sometimes don't understand this and the understandable first reaction is to say they only did a little bit of e-mail and Web browsing - so they couldn't have used that much data."
Of late, he says, the company has been promoting the Vodacom App heavily, as means to manage data usage. "We send SMS notifications when people reach certain thresholds of bundle usage and when their bundle has been depleted. Additional bundles can be bought via the app or via our Web site. We [also] give customers the option to soft lock their account once a predefined usage limit has been reached."
Cell C and Telkom Mobile both say they too have geared up education around data usage and the things that lead to bill shock.
Cell C says, however, the company's flat rates eliminate much of the would-be problem. "With [our] 99c flat rate and 15c per MB in- and out-of-bundle data rates, customers know what they are paying."
However, where the operator's tariff structure is useless, is in the case of overseas telecoms. "Most of our bill shock queries are around international roaming, specifically on data. Customers are encouraged to check the roaming tariffs applicable to those countries where they intend to roam to ensure they understand the rates they will pay when making or receiving calls and/or accessing data."
Telkom Mobile says, on the data front in particular, the company has developed mechanisms to minimise bill shock by limiting the opportunities for subscribers to go over their monthly limit. These include an SMS reminder once customers reach designated data thresholds, a self-service portal, mobile apps and the introduction of WiFi services.
"While Telkom Mobile endeavours to educate customers about their packages and their bills, and also to limit the chances of them overspending without their knowledge, we still get a few queries relating to billing - most of these are due to international roaming billing."
To address this, Telkom Mobile has developed an on-boarding programme for post-paid customers, which imparts information about how to avoid incurring exorbitant bills when travelling overseas.
MTN had not responded to queries by the time of publication.
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