CELL C Month to month contract and shocking customer service!

I visited the Waterfront Cell C store in June last year when I was due for an upgrade. My iPhone X was still working well, so I decided not to get a new phone at that time. The lady who assisted me suggested that I go onto a month to month contract, and then I could then upgrade at any point without incurring any upgrade fee, when I needed a new phone. I have subsequently discovered from consumer journalist Wendy Knowler that there is no need to sign anything for my contract to continue on a month-to-month basis once your initial period is up, so I was CLEARLY DUPED into signing a 24 month contract!

I visited the Waterfront store on 12 Feb 2022 in order to arrange an upgrade as I now need a new cellphone. I was dismayed to hear that in order for me to upgrade I need to cancel my current 24 month contract and pay a cancellation fee of approx. R3000!

If it had been explained to me that by signing a 24 month SIM only contract I could only upgrade without any fee, in 24 months I would never have signed the contract, as I knew that I would need a new phone within the next 6 months or so. Please also see reply from the Store about this unilateral decision: "Unfortunately Cell C has implemented a change as of the 03/02/2022 it will be mandatory for all contracts ending early or are upgraded early to pay an Early Cancelation fee. As of yet we are unable to come up with a work around for this situation as it affects multiple customers. "

I have also unfortunately experienced additional poor service at the Waterfront store and from your call centre: I requested that the monthly fee continued to be deducted from my Discovery Credit card. This was not captured on my account, and I was then receiving calls from the central accounts department to settle my bill via EFT, which I did. I then called the Cell C call centre to ask them to capture the debit order details. However, this was unfortunately not done. I then visited Waterfront Cell C store in December to try to rectify this. The debit order details are STILL not captured believe it or not! I was contacted to make another manual payment about 10 days ago. Not sure how Cell C are still in business? Regards, Linda