{"id":190164,"date":"2017-08-04T08:13:56","date_gmt":"2017-08-04T06:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=190164"},"modified":"2017-08-04T08:16:28","modified_gmt":"2017-08-04T06:16:28","slug":"vodacoms-data-prices-are-disgusting-south-africas-richest-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/190164\/vodacoms-data-prices-are-disgusting-south-africas-richest-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"“Vodacom’s data prices are disgusting” – South Africa’s richest woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Billionaire Wendy Applebaum has slammed Vodacom for its “criminal” data pricing.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the Daily Maverick and Nandos<\/strong><\/a> media gathering on Thursday, Applebaum accused Vodacom of making massive margins on data prices which it then sent to Vodaphone in the UK.<\/p>\n

“How can Vodacom charge R150 or R250 for a gigabyte\u00a0or two but Telkom can charge R25,” she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cData is eaten up and stolen, it\u2019s utterly disgusting! It’s criminal!\u201d<\/p>\n

She further called for an end to ongoing inquiries into data prices and demanded that action be taken against all mobile companies immediately.<\/p>\n

History with Vodacom<\/strong><\/h3>\n

According to a July 2017 report <\/a><\/strong>by Entrepreneur magazine, Applebaum is currently the wealthiest women in South Africa with a net worth of R4.7 billion.<\/p>\n

Despite her immense wealth,\u00a0this is not the first time she has hit out against Vodacom and data prices.<\/p>\n

In April 2017, Applebaum instituted legal proceedings against Vodacom over its high out-of-bundle charges.<\/p>\n

She said subscribers are not warned they have reached their monthly billing limit, and are then forced to pay high amounts for out-of-bundle usage.<\/p>\n

“When cellphone companies do not warn subscribers they are about to go out of bundle, and then force them to make stop-order payments for invoices they have not agreed to, it amounts to fraud,” she said.<\/p>\n

Appelbaum reportedly instructed her lawyers to try to persuade Vodacom\u00a0to change its practices, and said she will \u201cscratch until I draw blood\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0MTN returns to profit on data growth<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Billionaire Wendy Applebaum has slammed Vodacom for their “disgusting” and “criminal” data pricing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":190170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,27],"class_list":["post-190164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190164"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190194,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190164\/revisions\/190194"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}