My Data’s Gone! Wait a Minute…no, it's Not.

Something odd happened to me the other day. A couple of months ago I bought airtime from MTN which I converted in to data to use online. That data has to last for 2 months (60 days). It used to be 30, until people complained a lot. They complained because they may have bought a large data bundle, only to find that they hadn’t spent some (or most) of it, and then at the end of the period that the data is valid for, it’s gone. Just like that.

This isn't the first time I've had trouble with MTN, by the way.

Anyhow, I still had a sizeable chunk of my data left, and I badly wanted to use it up before it expired. I got an e-mail a day or two before telling me that soon my data would expire. So, it was late, and after some blogging and such, I wanted to use the data I had left to download something. I won’t tell you what it was (it wasn’t what you think it is). I dialed the number on my cellphone to check my balance to see how much I had left, and I was shocked when it read 0 bytes data. I was kind of sad, frustrated, and angry all at once.

How dare they take my bloody data!

Anyway, I still had some airtime left, so I thought, I’ll use what’s left. So I started my download, and all the while I was seething because of what had transpired earlier. MTN had told me that my data would expire on the 1st of November, and it was after midnight when I tried to download this file. I was expecting the download to stop any time because I didn’t have much airtime- but it kept going. I was confused, as I checked my balance again and again. It wasn’t using the airtime, so what was it using? It still read 0 bytes data, while a day before it was above 50 MB. I figured that even though it said I had nothing left, there was still indeed data being used. Maybe it hadn’t been cleared, or it was a grace period or something.

I don’t know how much longer it would have lasted seeing as it said the 1st of November was the day, but I managed to get my download finished, and got what I wanted. That was such a close call. In the end all my airtime was used up too. So it was 0 R Airtime, 0 bytes data, 0 smss. It’s time to top up again, I think.

My Data’s Gone! Wait a Minute…no, it's Not.