“You pay for the steak, but you don't get the steak!

“You pay for the steak, but you don’t get the steak!”

I don’t know if anyone recognizes this phrase, but it’s one that Judge Judith Sheindlin (aka Judge Judy) used to talk about in her court cases. Which brings me to the grumpy old man complaint of the day. Vivo, and it’s overwhelmingly complicated APP which you are forced to use. It is nothing more than a money grab. My other half forgot she was not connected to wifi the other night and burned up her 11 gigabytes of monthly data. No problem right? Just add some data. Which gets me to the point. I go to the VIVO App, select her number, select recharge, pick some Gigs and hit pay. It pops up the PIX code which I pay and expect to get an indication that her internet is back NADA…

Ok, I figure I’ll wait a couple hours and check again. Still nothing available for her in the data department. Then a bit later I stumble upon the “Technical Support Button” in the app. I click on it and have it do it’s analysis. The pop-up informs me the data is exhausted, would I like to buy a package of data to tide me over? So what the heck, I figure maybe this is the “magic bullet”.  So, I cough up another $R10 for a gig and select to add it to my next bill. Hitting proceed, everything is supposed to be Honkey Dorey. However, guess what? Still “NO STEAK”.  So now I’m thinking maybe tomorrow I’ll get the steak. My thoughts are this, where is this money in the meantime, and who is benefiting by using it while I’m waiting for my steak? It doesn’t seem right that someone should be able to sell you a product which is purely digital in nature without delivering it immediately upon payment. It just smells in my grumpy old mans mind.