Samba Mobile Broadband - Is it Really Free?

larry_lurex

Uplink wrote: »

... So I seriously don't understand why you can't get any ads or credit. Even more, you did say somebody else logged into your account and could get credit on your behalf, right? So I am really really confused. How can somebody else earn credit using your account, but not you?

I put some screen shots up. Have a look.

Ali_Baba

patman99 wrote: »

Ali Baba have you contacted Samba about the failed adverts ?. They may not be aware that there is a problem.
One thing they can do and that is to compare your IP Adress against the those who viewed the adverts in question and apply any corrections.

No i haven't bothered to get in touch with them. I just didn't think it worth it for ~45MB to send the detailed email. I'm also a little suspicious about drawing attention to myself given the stories I keep reading online about accounts being closed. I would rather just take what I've got from them so far and be happy with it.

Blue_Max

Ali_Baba wrote: »

No i haven't bothered to get in touch with them. I just didn't think it worth it for ~45MB to send the detailed email. I'm also a little suspicious about drawing attention to myself given the stories I keep reading online about accounts being closed. I would rather just take what I've got from them so far and be happy with it.

Have they really closed accounts just because someone complained?!
:huh:

Uplink

larry_lurex wrote: »

I put some screen shots up. Have a look.

Sorry, up where?


Anyway, all of a sudden I'm out of ads as well, except for the lucky dip. I looked at my account statistics, and I earned only 400 MB this month, so I'm nowhere near the 2GB "fair" monthly limit that others suggested.

My earned data so far looks like so:

September: 31.50 MB (used 9.80 MB)
October: 293.00 MB (used 228.80 MB)
November: 271.50 MB (used 464.39 MB)
This month: 404.00 MB (used 405.94 MB)
Credit right now, after watching and depleting my ads: 175.70 MB

Those come from the Samba website. After seeing the numbers for November, I did the math, and it doesn't work out. The grand total ends up as -108.93 MB (that's a minus sign in front). Double data days may contribute to the negative total, but there haven't been that many double data days, and I somehow have a tendency not to use Samba when those days are on - it's not intentional, it just happens as a weird statistical glitch

Hmm... The only thing I did differently is to earn over 400 MB this month. I don't have enough information to know if this is relevant, especially as others said Samba appear to be short on ads these days as a general matter.

Larry, what do your usage and earnings numbers say? You may have just been very very "lucky" this month and hit a "perfect storm" of events, like Samba running out of ads generally _plus_ your device(s) eating data without telling you _plus_ other people still seeing ads because they just had them in the pipeline - making you feel singled out for not seeing any ads. In that case, I guess you're entitled to spit fire on Samba - I know I would but even then, I don't think you can do much about it except wait for the month to end (plus a few days?) for whatever counters are there to reset themselves. Which means, just go enjoy what's left of this year, as it's not worth it to get angry with Samba, and we'll see what next year will be bringing.

prowla

I reckon the Samba people are on holiday at the moment.

woodface7

Anyone know if they use the mobile number you give for anything?

I recently signed up and gave one I rarely switch on, to avoid possibility of being spammed.

Blue_Max

Uplink wrote: »

My earned data so far looks like so:
September: 31.50 MB (used 9.80 MB)
October: 293.00 MB (used 228.80 MB)
November: 271.50 MB (used 464.39 MB)
This month: 404.00 MB (used 405.94 MB)

The 'data earned' figures are too low.
In December alone I got 3596.50 MB in total.
But so far this month, the daily average has dived to 48 MB.

Samba_Mobile_representative

Folks,

Samba here. First of all, welcome to the service. We aim to give the best value and service we can, and we will and do get back to all queries!

Please email us at support@sambamobile.com if you have problems or for often the fastest response post on our community site at http://help.sambamobile.com/Community

However, we are not a high street telco making billions, so please be patient while we work through your queries.

I'll be posting in a moment on tips on managing your Samba credit

Samba_Mobile_representative

Hi there,

There have been a number of questions around how the battery works. Here's some tips for all Samba/MSE customers:

1. The battery is credited straight away when you view an ad BUT is only debited after 3 hours or so when we get the confirmation from Three.

2. SIMs do drain small amounts if you have processes working in the background on your tablet/computer/phone. This could be anything from having javascript on to having images on. This is true for any provider.

3. If you ever see 'this ad has expired' it is very often because the ad has not been clicked on quickly enough after being selected. Why is this? Because our ad providers won't credit an 'ad view' unless the ad is clicked on shortly after being selected on the grid.

4. Ads have frequency caps - some ads can only be viewed twice, some up to six times or above. This is a condition of Samba being paid (and thus Samba being able to provide our users with free data) as, understandably, there's no such thing as 'something for nothing' from advertisers. They want our users to view their ads, but typically not more than 4/5 times (because they figure that if you've seen an ad video up to 4/5 times, you get the message!

5. Ads also have time caps - ie you can't see the same ad loads of times straight after each other, for the same reason as above.

6. Please rest assured we at Samba want to give you, our customers, the best service. We are just over 6 months old, and I am told we have more customers than Giff Gaff at the same stage, so I hope that broadly people are happy with the value provided. We are always working to provide service, technical solutions, and more content, and look forward to giving away more free data in 2013.

From the Samba team

For any further feedback, please get in touch at [EMAIL="support@sambamobile.com"]support@sambamobile.com[/EMAIL]

Blue_Max

Samba_Mobile_representative wrote: »

Hi there,
2. SIMs do drain small amounts if you have processes working in the background on your tablet/computer/phone. This could be anything from having javascript on to having images on. This is true for any provider.

Yes this is true. Last week I used the SIM to check this again. No ads were available to watch; just viewed SIM home page and Samba pages. The data used was 12.22 MB.

So, to watch ads, I will only be using normal BB connection or the free 400 MB per month data that comes with Ovivomobile.

I am building up credit so that I can get Internet access where a wi-fi hot-spot is not available.
Does anyone know if the SIM would get canceled/deactivated if it not used for a period of time?
There is nothing about this in Samba FAQ or T&C