Lots of people don’t know the difference between bites and bytes – but one tough customer refused to be bitten.

Data  bundles,  bandwidth, gigabytes, megabytes – whatever they call them, certain internet service providers clearly hope that most consumers are either too busy to be bothered to know exactly what they are buying, or simply pretend to understand the techie jargon. Altech Autopage Cellular, for example, was confident their new customer was an IT illiterate when they sold Christine Kinsman of Benoni their new data bundle “special” in April.

That month the company distributed fliers promoting a mobile data bundle of 40 gigabytes at an industry low of just R189 a month. On April 15, Kinsman signed a subscriber agreement for the special offer. According to the contract she signed, each month for the following twelve months she would receive 20 gigs for peak time, plus another 20 gigs of night access. This was by far the best deal available in the country at the time.

The following day, she received a text message advising her that 7.5GB midnight data and 2.5GB peak data had been uploaded on to her account. This didn’t seem right, as a pro-rata amount from mid-month should have been 10GB each. She immediately called Ariel, the Autopage Cellular agent who had signed her up. Ariel didn’t seem to know what had happened, but promised to investigate.

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