Cell C

WORST customer service ever! My daughter ( who is a student at UWC ) and I went to Cell C to get her a data package for online classes. The sales person at Cell C suggested that I upgrade from my month to month 5GB day/ 3GB night data package to the 50GB day/ 30GB night package for my daughter. I made sure that it was not a contract, but month to month package. After a few months we realized that 50GB only lasted for around 25 days. End of February I called Cell C and asked to upgrade my current package to the next package. They suggested the 100GB day/ 100GB night, as my daughter used around 2 Gigs per day.

On the 11th of March I checked the data usage and 73GB data was all ready used in just 11 days. My daughter confirmed that she did nothing out of her daily routine that could justify such high data usage.

On the 12th I went to the Cell C branch and the sales person called the branch help desk to ask how this is possible, they send him a data usage report, but we could only see small amounts, like mostly KB that was used maybe 1 or 2 times were a few MB was used per page. He printed the 120 pages data usage report, and I took it with me to investigate. I started by looking at the daily usage and found that on 4 separate days the data usage was 33,3GB, 12GB, 11GB, 7GB then 3 and 4GB other days was her normal 1 to 2GB usage. I focused on the 4 days with high usage and found that there was one specific number that popped up, in the wrong time slot with high usage up to 7GB per line and the time frame was from 1 minute usage to 15 minutes. Also found that places where her actual usage was 9,87KB or 9,26KB the usage that was subtracted was rounded off to 50KB or too 100KB. I added her actual KB and MB usage up and found that on pages where only 568,47MB was used Cell C deducted 7,26GB was deducted from her 100GB data package, another example she used 283,59MB but 10,83GB was deducted, on another page not even 1MB was used but 6,69GB was deducted. This happened on most of the pages. I then checked her actual daily usage against what was deducted and found the following: 696,67MB used, but 1,3GB deducted 1,5GB used but 33,32GB deducted 662,82MB used but 11.4GB deducted 568,47MB used, 7,26GB deducted 937,57MB used, 12,43GB deducted and it continues.

I took the data usage report back to Cell C branch and asked for answers, needless to say I was not helped, had to go back to the store 2 times, the helpdesk assistant was very very rude, kept interrupting me and the branch manager and just said if the data was used it was used. I then call the Cell C helpline numerous times, first time the operator asked me what do I want her to do? and the line was "dropped" After another a call was logged and I was promised that Cell C will get back to me with in 2 days, this did not happen only after 4days I was contacted, again a call was logged and promises. I continued to call them. The last "Help" I got from Cell C was a promise that my query would be send to Cell C s senior billing department and that the operator will contact me in person with in 2 days. I only received a email stating that no discrepancies was found on the billing. I was not satisfied and said I want the contact number for this department, but again a call was logged and I did not hear from Cell C up to now. I also send an email to Cell C escalations and also to ICASA Consumer protection to complain. ICASA referred the "matter" to Cell C escalations. This process took more than 15days.

I went to Cell C and said I am giving my one month notice to cancel this (month to month) data package as I am not going to pay R700 per month and my Data is ****** by Cell C. The lady in the branch informed me that I can not cancel my data package I will have to pay a contract cancelation penalty fee of over R19000,00. I informed her that I do not have a 2 year CONTRACT, but was very specific that I did not want a contract but the month to month package and that I am suppose to give one month notice. She informed me that is unfortunately not how it works anymore as Cell C has changed their "policy" in the mean time.