I just returned from my visit to Australia and received an SMS from Cell C saying my account was blocked as I had reached the limit on my account. I quickly called customer services to find out what was going on, and they told me there was a R23,000 pending balance on my account. They looked into it a bit further and it showed the vast majority of this amount was for international data roaming charges. I was then told they charge R351.55 per MB for data roaming in Australia. This amount is absolutely obscene.
Cell C are not clear and do not make their customers aware of the high fees for international data roaming. No person in their right mind would accept or make use of a service thats charges R351.55 per MB, no matter how wealthy they are. Cell C should therefore not be partnering with overseas networks who charge rates like this. Cell C are irresponsible for putting their customers in a position with such extreme potential financial liability, without their knowledge.
If Cell C continue to offer international data roaming at these rates, they should send the user a warning via SMS as soon as you join the network. Then they should continue to SMS you as you incur charges.
In this modern day in age, most users such as myself use a smartphone. If your smartphone has not been connected to any data network for several days, it could quite easily use tens or hundreds of megabytes of data without you actually doing anything on the phone.
I personally incurred a R23,000 bill after attempting to use international data roaming in one single session in an emergency in Australia. The data connection was so bad, I couldn't even achieve what I urgently needed to do (some online banking). R23,000 for 65mb of data is INSANE! Cell C should not allow their customers to put themselves in this position.
The irony of it is that I even purchased a local sim card to avoid high roaming fees. The local sim card ran out of credit the day before I left which is why I used the international roaming on my Cell C sim in an emergency on my last day.
Can anyone please offer any advice on how this can be handled? There is no way I can pay this insane charge. Has anyone had a similar experience?
Cell C are not clear and do not make their customers aware of the high fees for international data roaming. No person in their right mind would accept or make use of a service thats charges R351.55 per MB, no matter how wealthy they are. Cell C should therefore not be partnering with overseas networks who charge rates like this. Cell C are irresponsible for putting their customers in a position with such extreme potential financial liability, without their knowledge.
If Cell C continue to offer international data roaming at these rates, they should send the user a warning via SMS as soon as you join the network. Then they should continue to SMS you as you incur charges.
In this modern day in age, most users such as myself use a smartphone. If your smartphone has not been connected to any data network for several days, it could quite easily use tens or hundreds of megabytes of data without you actually doing anything on the phone.
I personally incurred a R23,000 bill after attempting to use international data roaming in one single session in an emergency in Australia. The data connection was so bad, I couldn't even achieve what I urgently needed to do (some online banking). R23,000 for 65mb of data is INSANE! Cell C should not allow their customers to put themselves in this position.
The irony of it is that I even purchased a local sim card to avoid high roaming fees. The local sim card ran out of credit the day before I left which is why I used the international roaming on my Cell C sim in an emergency on my last day.
Can anyone please offer any advice on how this can be handled? There is no way I can pay this insane charge. Has anyone had a similar experience?