Well I’m sad to say that I no longer endorse their products and I strongly recommend you find another alternative. Their service has become absolutely shocking and their call center and stores need some serious work.

Here is why I’ve lost my cool with them.

In January this year I bought the 60GB speedstick and in fairness, to this day I have never had a problem with it. Since this awesome little device made my life so much easier, I decided to get my wife the 24GB speed stick just over 2 months ago and I’m regretting it ever since.

My wife went to the CellC branch in Northgate to get the speedstick and was told that their RICA machine was not working so she must come back the next day. They only had 1 speedstick in stock so my wife asked for them to keep it for her till the next day. The sales person said this would not be a problem.

The next day she went back to the shop at 10am to be told that they had sold it. The person who promised to keep it, just shrugged his shoulders and said “I can’t control everything here”. So my wife ended up driving to the Clearwater branch, guess what… also out of stock, so was Cresta and Fourways. So eventually I went to the Midrand branch to get one. My first complaint is not that so many of their branches were out of stock, although you would think they would look after their stock levels, my first complaint is the rudeness and useless service from the Northgate branch salesperson.

So I got the speedstick from Midrand and it was working fine for the first 2 1/2 weeks before the sim card is was rejected in the speedstick as well as in a phone (Yes I do test things before I call the help desk). I called the service desk and was informed that the SIM was faulty and I would need to take it to any Cell C store to have a sim swap done. So my wife went the following day to Northgate again (BIG mistake).

She was told that airtime needed to be loaded and there was nothing wrong with the sim card.. really?!?

So my wife called me from the store and passed her phone to the person ‘helping’ her at the store. I explained the story and explained that the sim doesn’t work if you put it in a phone and hence airtime was not the problem, I also explained that I had called the help desk the previous day and they had confirmed it was the sim that was faulty. The store still insisted that it was airtime and even got a little snotty with me on the phone. I made the person a deal…. top up the phone with HIS money, and if the problem went away I would pay him back double, if not, it’s his loss. You think he went for it? fat chance.

So he insisted that it was airtime, but was not willing to take me up on my offer, clearly he was not that convinced and then informed my wife that she needed to go to Checkers to get R5 airtime so he could fix the problem. YOU MUST BE JOKING?!?! This is a Cell C store, are you really telling me I have to go to Checkers to get airtime???

Needless to say, the airtime did NOT fix the problem. The person said “Oh, well that usually works” Could any more lies come out of these people’s mouths???? So they did a sim swap which is what we asked for in the first place and then proceeded to charge us R10 for this. The sim card is not even a MONTH old! So this exercise not only cost my wife’s time but this also cost R15 to sort out (I’m not moaning about the R15, I’m moaning about the principle, the waste of time and the absolutely shocking service)

So I decided I would complain to Cell C about the whole issue. So we all know we are supposed to “Tell Trevor” so I did, and I received an email just moments later saying they would look into it and get back to me. This was an automated reply, and I have not heard a thing from them since.

Just 2 weeks later, the speedstick stopped working again. This time it was not the sim card getting rejected, it just didn’t download anything. I called the help desk again and was informed that this time it was because I needed to load airtime (excuse me a for a second while I slam my head against a wall). So I asked why, apparently you have to top up with airtime to extend the “window”. This is when I totally lost it, I had paid UPFRONT for a FULL YEAR service of 2GB a month for 12 months. That means, it should work for a FULL YEAR. The person on the other side of the phone disagreed with me, to which I replied, then why is my other one still working? He had no answer but insisted that I needed to top up the airtime.

There is no chance in HELL I’m going to spend more money on this, when I’ve clearly paid for a Years service, the argument went on for over 20 minutes until eventually I just said, “You know what, don’t worry about it, I’ll just go to the ombudsman”. All of a sudden I’m transferred to a manager who assures me this will be resolved. My window was extended for a month until their accounts department would rectify this, I then received an email 2 weeks later saying that it has been fixed. I dialled 140 to see when my airtime window had been extended to and discovered it’s only been extended until the 20th June next year. So guess what this means… 21st of June, I’ll be calling the ombudsman to lay a complaint.

Cell C – You really need to get your act together. You had a person (me) that was promoting your products for you for over a year. I’ve been a happy customer for ages and brought you tons of business and this is how you repay me?!? I have noted the way you treat your nice customers and hence I’ve decided I don’t want to be a nice customer anymore.

P.S – This review was written on a friends computer because guess what… yip the speed stick is not working again. I’m not even going to waste my time explaining how wonderful the service was from the help desk.

P.P.S – If you work at Cell C, I might need to explain that in my PS, I’m being sarcastic about the “wonderful” service, it was shocking as usual.

City: ALL

Country: South Africa

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Overall poor service, below average food with a great bakery. My suggestion would be to not try serve so many tables and rather focus on getting the orders right and keeping the food hot.

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Country: South Africa

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Box office will allow you to rent a movie directly on your DSTV decoder for R25. One is left asking what is to become of video stores and no doubt owners of video stores must be a little worried.

You may or may not know that your hard drive in your PVR is currently partitioned (split) into multiple sections. A few years ago I was training a course with someone from DSTV and they informed me that the extra partitions where going to be used for “future services”. The first ‘future service’ was DSTV on demand which as you know has been around for quite some time now. The second ‘future service’ has just arrived in the form of DSTV Box office. Your decoder will download 15 movies onto the hard drive waiting for you to rent them. Due to the multiple partitions on the hard drive of your PVR you will not lose recording time as some people have suggested and all 15 movies will occupy space on a reserved partition designed for exactly this new feature.

Last night at around 2am, my HD PVR did a firmware update and this morning there is now the new menu for the Box Office movies. No doubt when you get home tonight you will see this new feature waiting for a test drive over the weekend.

So how does this new service from DSTV work?

Firstly you will need to sms you smartcard number to 37569, which will enable the service and will create a new box office account for you. Your box office account is separate from your DSTV account and will need to be paid for separately.

Once you have enabled the box office feature on your PVR decoder, you will then be able to choose the movie you wish to watch and then choose a payment option. There are currently 3 payment options available

1. Charge your box office account. If you currently have your DSTV account set up for debit orders, your box office account will be set up automatically in the same way… if your cell phone number is on DSTV records.
2. You can pre-charge your box office account. Just a like a pay as you go service.
3. Charge to your credit card. This is a little more painful as you will need to sms the rental code for the movie to DSTV, they will then send you a link that you will need to use to make payment.

So how do you rent a movie?

When you press the green button on your PVR remote control, you will have an option for Box Office, you will then see a list of all the movies currently available for viewing. Select the movie you wish to rent, accept the teams and conditions, choose the payment option and then finally sms the rental code to DSTV.

It may seem like a pain to have to sms the code, but at least this will control who can rent movies at home. DSTV needs to have your cell phone number on record, and only if the code is sent from that number will the movie rental be successful. If you choose to give the rest of your household control over renting movies, you can add an additional 3 cell phone numbers to the authorised list of users.

Once all of this is done, you are free to watch the movie as many times as you like within the next 48 hours.

How Often are movies changed?

Box Office will at any given time have 15 movies available for you to rent, these movies will be updated weekly. This is pretty much the same structure that your cinema uses. Every week a movie gets released another movie has to be removed. So although the list of 15 movies is updated every week, this does not mean there will be 15 new movies each week. I have no doubt that if DSTV is making a bundle of money off of one movie, there is a good chance it will stay there longer… just like it does at your cinema.

DSTV have stated that they expect to have 150 title during a year on their box office service, so you could expect to see 2 -3 new movies each week.

How new will the movies be?

DSTV have stated that the launch of a movie on Box Office will be between 4 – 6 months after it was released on circuit. This is the same time frame that you local video/DVD store releases the titles and DSTV has also claimed the movies would be available on Box Office on the same day as the stores get it.

So what are the first 15 movies?

1. It’s kind of a funny story
2. I am Number Four
3. The Dilemma
4. Yogi Bear
5. Drive Angry
6. 127 Hours
7. Tangled
8. The Next Three Days
9. Black Swan
10. The King’s Speech
11. Gulliver’s Travels
12. Little Fockers
13. Due Date
14. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows : Part 1
15. The Town

There is already a lot of talk on forums and blogs about this new service, some of it positive, some of it negative… what are your thoughts?

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Country: South Africa

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This offer is probably one of the best internet offers in the country; for someone that doesn’t require a lot of internet connectivity and doesn’t want to have the monthly payments associated with pretty much all the other providers.

The 3GB package, which is now also being advertised heavily on TV and Radio, will cost you R749 once-off and will give you a 3G modem (Speed Stick) which is capable of running at a maximum of 7.2Mbps. The package will also come with 3GB of data that you can use anytime you want within a 365 day window period.

If we work this out on an average per month; this gives you an average of 256 MB for R63.25 per month. Yes, I know it’s not a month to month contract, but this just illustrates the effective monthly costs with this package.

The closest offering that I’ve managed to find from anywhere else is Vodacom’s Internet Starter Pack. A pre-warning… the packages are VERY different, but you will see why I associate them in later in this review. This pack costs R399 once off and gives you 100MB of data per month for a full year. The package is very different from the new package from Cell C since Vodacom only allocates you 100MB per month whereas the Cell C offer gives you 3GB upfront to use how and when you want during the year. Vodacom’s Internet Starter Pack works out to R33.25 per month for 100MB per month, which still makes the Cell C deal cheaper per MB if you average the two packages out on a month to month basis. Granted if you only need 100MB of data per month, the Vodacom deal looks attractive.

Here is what I find quite interesting about the new offer from Cell C. You can get this offer in two flavours.
1/ R749 which gives you 3GB of data AND the modem
2/ R399 which just gives you the data, NO modem.

This means that they are putting a price tag on the modem of R350.

Hang on a second….. if we look at Cell C’s other package, one of the original whoosh packages (24GB package), here is what we see
1/ R1499 once-off gives you 2GB of data every month for a year AND a modem
2/ R999 once-off for just the 2GB per month without the modem.

This now means they are putting a price tag on the modem of R500 – it doesn’t say if the modem is the exact same model, but the maximum speeds are identical (7.2Mbps).

So Cell C… How about dropping the price of the 24GB whoosh package to R1349 once-off which would make the modem price effectively the same as your new offer, or would you prefer it if we go to Vodacom to get the Internet Starter pack for R399 and buy your 24GB package (data only) for R999 and slap your sim card in the Vodacom modem? Something tells me that your marketing department won’t be pleased if we all walk around with Vodacom modems instead of yours?

This would not only save us R101 on your current offer, but it would also give us a second sim card with 100MB of data per month that we could use in something else… like our iPad’s.

If anyone from Cell C is actually reading this… and you would like me to put my Cell C sim card in a Cell C Speed Stick, drop me a mail info[at]reviewsaboutanything[dot]com and I’ll send you my address where you can send me a free modem. Until then, I guess I’ll just keep the Cell C sim in my Vodacom Starter pack modem.

City: ALL

Country: South Africa

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You arrive at your hotel and check in at the front desk. When checking in, you give the front desk your credit card (for all the charges for your room). You get to your room and settle in. Someone calls the front desk and asked for (example) Room 620 (which happens to be your room). Your phone rings in your room. You answer and the person on the other end says the following,

“This is the front desk. When checking in, we came across a problem with your charge card information. Please re-read me your credit card number and verify the last 3 digits numbers at the reverse side of your charge card.”

Not thinking anything you might give this person your information, since the call seems to come from the front desk. But actually, it is a scam of someone calling from outside the hotel/front desk. They ask for a random room number. Then, ask you for credit card information and address information. Sounding so professional that you do think you are talking to the front desk.

If you ever encounter this problem on your vacation, tell the caller that you will be down at the front desk to clear up any problems… Then, go to the front desk and ask if there was a problem. If there was none, inform the manager of the hotel that someone called to scam you of your credit card information acting like a front desk employee.

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The Internet Starter Pack from Vodacom costs R399 as a once off payment and will give you 100MB of data per month for 12 months and includes a K3580-Z USB modem.
This is the perfect package for anyone needing access to the internet occasionally and for people that have mobile devices that require internet access like the Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy.
Since this is a prepaid sim card from Vodacom, if the 100MB of data is not enough for you more data bundles can always be purchased and added to your account.

Why this is such a good deal?
If you already have a prepaid sim card from Vodacom and wish to buy a 100MB data bundle each month for 12 months, at the current pricing structure it would cost you R1056 and would NOT include the modem.

P.S – Make sure to take your RICA documents with you when you go to get one

City: All

Country: South Africa

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Looks like competition in the mobile broadband market is starting to heat up, since Cell C launched its Whoosh service late last year all the providers have been improving their network speeds and dropping their costing for broadband internet. Cell C were the first provider to offer speeds of 21.6 Mbps breaking their rivals max speeds of 7.2, Vodacom not to be outdone released their 43.2Mbps network on the 16th of April followed shortly by Cell C releasing their 43.3Mbps network on the 19th April (only 3 days later, although only in Port Elizabeth for now).

Cell C have been the recent leaders in mobile internet, been the fastest and cheapest since late last year, although this now seems to all be changing. With the new Red is Mofaya offer from Vodacom, this now places them in the same price bracket as Cell C with their 2GB Whoosh offering at R149, and with their extra Night Owl data bundle adding another 2GB of data to the package, not only does this now make Vodacom the cheapest, but with their new network upgrades, it makes them the fastest and hence the new leaders in the mobile internet market.

Comparison between Vodacom’s Red is Mofaya vs. Cell C Whoosh

Vodacom

Cost: R149

Modem: 7.2Mbps

Data: 2GB+2GB

Cell C

Cost: R149

Modem: 7.2Mbps                 

Data: 2GB

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The rest of the e-mail says the following….

———————-START OF E-MAIL—————————-

Dear {Your name appears here} ,
Congratulations ! You are among those randomly selected and registered for further consideration in the diversity immigrant program. Selection guarantees that
you will receive a United States Permanent Resident Card(also known as Green Card or Diversity Visa) only if you follow the instructions for further processing.
$title
Acceptance Date: Friday 8th of April 2011 06:57:46 AM
Winner Name: {Your Name}
Country of Birth: {They have the value inserted here, and it’s actually correct!!!}
Phone Number: {What’s more scary is they managed to find my home phone number}

Is the Diversity Visa FREE ?
No. There is a big confusion. Only the participation in the Diversity Visa Lottery was free but the winners must pay the visa processing fees.

The fee is used to process your visa related documents and verify your identity.
Fees:

Type of Residence Card Status Amount (per person)
United States Permanent Resident Card Granted! – Waiting for payment of processing fee $880

Processing fees Included
Total $880

INSTRUCTIONS

Please read and follow all the instructions very carefully. With the Diversity Visa (also known as Green Card) you will enjoy all the advantages and benefits of a US permanent resident, including health and education benefits, and employment opportunities along with guidance in your new country, orientation sessions and programs to integrate into mainstream American society. Once received you can use it at any time you want to move in the United States or just travel. The visa must be renewed after 10 years.

Although you will have all the rights that a U.S. citizen has in the United States, without a relative or friend in the United States you may find the relocation difficult and expensive due the lack of experience in the American society. Therefore the U.S. Government helps you with the accommodation and offers you along with each visa Health Insurance (Freedom HSA Direct Individual Health insurance for 1 year), Dwelling(Apartment in any city you prefer, 1 bedroom for 3 months ), a guaranteed job(in the field that you are are currently qualified so you can start working even from the first week you arrive in the United States and get paid as U.S citizen. ) and education (for U.S. Students or Higher Education through EducationUSA. It includes transfer to a U.S college or Univeristy so you can continue your educational study. More details can be found at http://educationusa.state.gov/ .)
We remind you that only the visa processing fee ($880) is mandatory and the visa is guaranteed upon receiving the payment.

Accompanying family members(wife/husband, fiancee, brothers, sisters, children, cousins) may be included in the program and their visas will be provided at the same time with yours so you can travel/move together in the same time. However the fees must be paid per person and each member(e.g wife, brother, parents, children, cousin) must pay $880. There is no discount for children.

Visa Payment processing instructions
The fees must be paid using Western Union money transfer and will be processed by the U.S. embassy in the United Kingdom.

Western Union is a leading provider of International person-to-person money transfer. With more than 150 years experience and 245,000 Agent locations in over 200 countries and territories, Western Union is recognized for sending money quickly, reliably, and safety.
You can send the payment in U.S. dollars or equivalent of your local currency.

Click on the following link to find the nearest Western Union agency and send the fees payment :
Find Western Union Agency
If you are unable to find a Western Union agency near your location, you may ask a relative or friend to pay the fee on your behalf.

After you find a Western Union agency you need to go with cash money, an identity card(e.g passport or national identity card) and send the payment to the U.S. embassy agent address in United Kingdom:

Name : Adam Ramon Magee
Address: 24 Grosvenor Square
London, W1A 2LQ
United Kingdom

The payment must be sent to the above U.S. embassy agent address in United Kingdom because the U.S. Government decided this based on the diplomatic relations with your country.

After you send the payment follow the next steps :

a) Email copy/scan of the Western Union receipt at usgov.dv@usa.com
b) Email at usgov.dv@usa.com with the following details (you can find them on the money transfer receipt):

1) Money Transfer Control Number (MTCN):
2) Exact sender’s name on file with Western Union:
3) Exact sender’s address on file with Western Union:
4) Exact receiver’s name on file with Western Union:
5) Amount sent:

Then wait for the confirmation that the payment was received.

Within 72 hours, you will receive a confirmation via email with your Case Number/Confirmation Number and exact date and time(approx. 2 days) of the final interview. Upon successful interview you will receive your documents and travel information to move in the United States. Under no circumstances your visa status won’t be affected by the interview.

Important Notice!

The payment must be sent via Western Union no later than April 22, 2011. You are strongly encouraged not to wait until the last day to pay. Heavy demand may result in system delays.
Under no circumstances can diversity visas be issued or adjustments approved after this date, nor can family members obtain diversity visas to follow-to-join the principal applicant in the U.S. after this date.
The visa processing fee(US$ 880) is mandatory for each person and the U.S. Government doesn’t offer any discount, loan or exception.
You have been selected winner of the Diversity Visa lottery so the visa is guaranteed upon receiving the payment fees on time.
A hard copy of this letter will be mailed to your postal address upon receiving the payment fees.
Please be advised that even through you are a winner of Diversity Visa your Case Number/Confirmation Number will be provided only after you send the payment confirmation of the fees. Please do not contact us to ask for the Case Number/Confirmation Number.

If it would be necessary to contact the U.S. Department of state YOU MUST ALWAYS REFER TO YOUR NAME. The email address is usgov.dv@usa.com

———————END OF E-MAIL——————————

Couple other points of interest on this scam.
1/ The person sending the mail is usgov.dv@consultant.com – Surely it would be from usa.com based on the above?
2/ If you go to the web address usa.com and look at the very bottom you will see the following text
“The USA.com website and domain are privately owned and are not operated by
or affiliated with any government or municipal authority.”
3/ As far as I’m aware, if you do actually win the green card lottery, there is NO MONEY PAYABLE, it’s free. (Like I said, as far as I know)
4/ If you win the official green card lottery, there is a time frame that you have to reply and have all your paper work in order, but last I heard that was 6 months – 1 year. Not a couple weeks as indicated by this scam e-mail.
5/ I never entered the competition… I did try once but it won’t allow me to based on me been a British Citizen, so how is it possible I won someting that I’ve never entered… it’s not.
6/ And this is the most important of the bunch, is read this link http://travel.state.gov/visa/immigrants/types/types_1749.html
This is the official information regarding the green card lottery, as well as the information about scams such as the above. All the checks needed to identify if it’s real can be found at this link.

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With the amount of websites, blogs, and forums on the internet these days running Google Adsense, one would think that there must be a tons of money to be made?

Doing a quick search on Google for Adsense will bring up thousands of sites claiming that you can make THOUSANDS of $$$ if you use their magic formula. Ironically most of these claims are through the use of Google Adwords which I’ll get into more detail shortly.

So the first big question, “Can you really make money with Google Adsense?” The short answer is Yes, but I think what most people really want to know is not if you can make money, but can you make a LOT of money with Google Adsense.
The short answer to this…. you will make more money flipping burgers at McDonalds then you will with Google Adsense.

So why are all these sites claiming that you can make thousands of $$$?

Firstly, most of these sites are selling programs, e-books or magic formulas on how to make money with Adsense. If they were really making as much money as they claim then I have to ask 3 questions.

1/ Why do they need to sell books and programs to show you how to do it? Surely if they are making so much money with Adsense they don’t need to waste their time making programs and eBooks?

2/ These programs they are selling are advertised using Google Adwords… this means it’s costing THEM money to try sell their product. I guarantee you that they are spending more money on the advertising then they are making from the advertising.

3/ If you really had a magic formulae for making tons of money, would you really want to share that with the world?

How much money, realistically, can you make with Google Adsense?
The amount of money you can make with Google Adsense is dependent on a couple things.

1/ How many page views do you get per day/per month on your site. – After researching this long and hard, not to mention owning 9 websites that run Google Adsense, a good average to work on is between 1% – 4% (CTR – Click through rate) of the page views you get will result in a click on an advert. The more page views you therefore get, the more clicks you will get.

2/ How many unique visitors do you get per day/per month – Unique visitors are important since some people just don’t click on adverts, ever. So the more unique people you get onto your site, the more likely you will have someone that will click on an ad.

3/ What is your websites topic? – Certain topics cost more to advertise on Google than others, the more the person paid to have their ad displayed, the more money you will receive from Google if someone clicks on your ad. Having topics that pay higher per click will ultimately result in you making more money.

4/ Ad placement – Although you don’t want to make your website cluttered with ads, it is important to fiddle with different settings and types of ads that you run on your website. There is sadly no magic formula for this and each of my websites behaves differently. On some of my websites standard text adverts work well compared to image and video ads. On some of my other websites the opposite is true. Not only are the type of ads important, but putting them in different places is vital as well. The only way to get this right, try something, leave it for a month or two look at the results then try something else, wait a month or two then compare the two sets of results and start the process again.

So based on the above you can see that it’s very hard to give a straight answer to the question “How much money, realistically, can you make with Google Adsense?” – however, Google shows you what the average amount of money you are currently getting per 1000 pageviews (eCPM – Cost per thousand). Again each of my websites shows totally different stats, some make less than $1 per 1,000 pageviews, others make over $10/ per 1,000. So in the first case if I wanted to make $100 per month, I would need to have over 100,000 page views per month. In the second scenario I would only need 10,000 page views to make $100. In order to generate the above mentioned pageviews in a month would require a lot of work advertising the site, not to mention the amount of good quality content that would be required to attract people to your site. Based on the amount of hours you would invest in doing this for the amount of money you would make in return, you would make more money flipping burgers at McDonalds then you will with Google Adsense.

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