News and stuff from Botswana
Hints, tips and observations on information technology.
One of the motivations for getting my amplifier working again was the need to listen to music on a system with more depth and weight than a set of Logitech 2.1s can provide.
Since I left my CD collection in the UK my sources are all mp3, with a Soundcloud habit as well.
So, how to listen? Well, I also have a Raspberry Pi habit, and they have an audio out (in my case on a Model B it’s a headphone jack).
Just sent an email to Orange Botswana complaining about their unreliable service.
Probably won’t make any difference but maybe some negative comments will show on search results for them…
Scroll down to the bottom for some other highlights from a local Consumer Watchdog Facebook page.
I am now at an all-time low with Orange Botswana postpaid.
There has been no response regarding the Orange Money issue. (readers’ note: a Virtual Visa transaction of ~P350 to the Steam online gaming service failed last year and has never been credited back to my account – Orange say I must take it up with Steam, the error message from Steam was “transaction failed: card not authorised”)
Our Flybox (79xxxxxx) that is on an “old” Platinum package and so limited to 5GB for P399 per month has reached the data limit after only 10 days of use (16 March to 26 March). The previous billing period it lasted the whole month (16 Feb to 15 March). Your customer service rep Kaone says it is not possible to send me a summary of when the data was used, but that I must wait for the invoice on the 16th of April. Kaone also told me that we should still be receiving a speed limited service, but we have nothing – although the speed in the village is ridiculously slow anyway.
Further on the Flybox, last year Orange “upgraded” the Platinum package to 20GB and a “soft” cap so that once the bundle is finished the connection stays live but is speed limited. I have been told that to get the 20GB “upgrade” we must cancel our existing contract (loyal customers with 3 lines for ~5 years) and pay the penalty fees. So only another year until we get the same service as a new customer.
Regarding the sending of invoices, I had to AGAIN manually request an invoice in March in order to make the right payment.
Since 30 March, my wife’s Blackberry (72xxxxxx), on a Blackberry-linked contract, has had no on-device data (my understanding is that on-device data is unlimited). She is being told her bundle is finished and must send a message to a cellphone number in order to receive a top-up – for which we will no doubt pay the exorbitant rates that service providers in Botswana like to charge for their mediocre services.
Kaone also told me that there was “a glitch” on the recent rollover where some customers were only credited with half their data bundles, but this was not the issue with our Flybox.
I look forward to a meaningful response.
#1
I give up on orange.
1-they changed my contract line to prepaid-still waiting for them to reverse the error that was 7 months ago and they still expect to pay for a postpaid service I have 7 months not using (they must refund my airtime)
2-same issue as yours on flybox. This month it seems they cut tgr service a week after the 16th (billing date) but mind you the internet is NEVER used during the day as nobody is home.
3-my mother has been an orange customer for 15 years and this month her ‘data’ finished. She enquired at orange only to get a yeah its finished. She hardly uses mobile data 1-her workplace has wifi, 2-she uses data for whats app and reading news online (thats when the flybox doesn’t work). Orange told her that her data limit is 200mb per month which is false cause that isn’t in the agreed contact.
#2.1
Got the same response two years ago. They bill you by the data cost and then do some kind of conversion to P399. No interest from managers and the accounts department is manned by new graduates with no idea of ‘who pays them’
#2.2
I’ve not been able to engage ‘roaming’ on my phone for 6 months, despite repeated contacts with orange. One clever girl even told me that I have to be in South Africa to request roaming. She’s obviously never been out of signal range.
#2.3
Please help me here. It was on the 4th of March 2016 when I tried to withdraw money from my orange money account using my orange money visa card. The transaction failed due to an orange network problem. The following morning I checked my orange money account to check if the network problem was resolved. Only for me discover that there was no money in my account. I checked my statement which revealed that I made a withdrawal the previous day thou I cudnt get money due to network issues. I then called the Orange helpline to ask for assistant,I hav been to the nearest orange office to complete a dispute form and told my money will b deposited into my account. Its bin a month now and iv not been compesated and when I call the only answer they give me its that they are still investigating. How convenient is orange money really!! How do I get my money back
One of the things you get used to around these parts is waiting for pages to load, so having been spoiled by an ADSL line almost to myself for a year the adjustment to sharing a line with other people felt like running in sand.
One of the things my new boss pushed in my direction was to see whether we should upgrade the office broadband. In 2014 they had requested to our ISP (Bytes Technology Group) to upgrade them from 1.024Mb/s to 2.048Mb/s (I can hear many of my overseas readers chortling at this), but nobody really noticed a change and page loading was still sluggish at best.
The shock came when I logged on to the modem-router and found that it was reporting our line speed as 1.024Mb/s… a year after the upgrade was requested and billing increased accordingly. Continue reading “A Curious Tale Of An Under-Performing Internet Connection”
I’m fascinated by numbers (logging my exercise, monitoring the weather, logging fuel consumption) and started logging how much electricity we use at home by reading the meter. We recently installed a solar hot water system and recent turmoil in Botswana’s power supply got me thinking about solar electricity – so how much energy do we use, and what do we do with it?
After much surfing of the internet and eBay browsing I discovered the OpenEnergyMonitor project, soon afterwards there was a box of goodies in the mail to me: a few emonTx v3s, Raspberry Pis, current transformers, temperature probes and an emonGLCD.
A couple of months ago I managed to sort out the installation (bit of a faff, but that’s another story), and now I can see how much power is being used at home from anywhere with an internet connection (as long as Orange Botswana keeps our Flybox online and the emoncms connection live). The nice thing about emoncms is that you can also embed the charts in your own website: Continue reading “Home Energy Monitor Feed”