Data price probe welcomed by all

What’s red, expensive and disappears when you look away? Vodacom data … Okay, enough of the cruel jokes, although the snide comments and biting memes doing the rounds on social media show that, in this digital age, there is no place to hide from irate consumers.

To its credit, Vodacom admitted that a system glitch, due to a configuration change, saw a huge number of consumers – the company won’t say how many – find that their data and airtime had mysteriously disappeared at the beginning of this week.

It promised to reinstate all the missing data and airtime and, in addition, offered the affected customers a 500MB bundle of data as an apology. Well done, Vodacom, for doing the right thing.

But these system glitches have happened before and customers have been told, in effect: tough luck, the system says you used the data, even when the customers knew they hadn’t.

The mess has also, timeously, highlighted the broader issue of how shockingly high data prices in South Africa are, and how data bundles “expire” after ridiculously short periods.

It is a good thing that the Competition Commission and government are looking into the practices of cellular providers. We hope that probe doesn’t also vanish …