Disgusting Service

I am deeply disgusted by the service we, my father and I, received yesterday evening when we called in to your customer care centre. My father lost his phone yesterday afternoon. He then went to a Cell C store for a sim swop and to blacklist the phone. He was told that he must go to CNA, buy a sim card and then call into customer care for them to activate the sim card over the phone. At about 6:30pm we made the call using my phone, as I am the only other person in our family with Cell C. Nonthuthuko was the lady who first tried to assist us. I informed her that I was calling on behalf of my father who had lost his phone and needed to sim swop and activate the sim card. She asked for the phone number we were calling about, which I gave to her. She then said before she could continue she would have to ask us security questions; that we had to get all the questions right or we would fail. She proceeded to ask us the security questions, my father was standing with me the entire time giving me the answers to the questions which I related to her. The first few questions were about how, where, how much he last recharged the phone and about data bundles in the phone. We answered those questions easily as my dad had last recharged the phone yesterday afternoon before he lost it. She then asked us to tell her the last couple of numbers which were dialled on the phone. We immediately bristled because how can he be expected to remember those numbers. He is an elderly gentleman and he doesn’t store phone numbers in his memory. I mean, that’s what he has a phone for???!!! He doesn’t even know my phone number off by heart and I’m his daughter!!! We told her that we unfortunately cannot provide that information because there is no way he will remember that. We went back and forth about this matter for a bit after which she informed us that she unfortunately could not assist as we had failed the security questions!! That she could not disclose which questions we got wrong but that we had failed. I then realised that we were not going to get anywhere with Nonthuthuko and asked to speak to her manager or supervisor. She then went and put me on hold for a long time. Which I don’t understand because what kind of service is that, putting us on hold for a long period of time just because we asked to speak to a higher authority?????!!!! Eventually she came back on the line and told us that she was transferring us to her team leader Sphamandla Ngcobo. We went through the same thing with Sphamandla telling us that they can’t disclose where we went wrong because it’s company policy blah blah blah!!! He then went through the questions again after we repeatedly asked him to generate other questions, since they kept telling us that the questions are randomly generated. We didn’t get anywhere with that either because the “randomly generated” questions are the same dumb questions that they asked before! He then modified the question about the last dialled numbers and asked my father what the most dialled number was, which my father answered quickly because it was my mother’s number which is the only number he has memorised. Sphamandla then told us again that we had failed the questions and that he could not assist further. I then realised that since we had answered the question about the last dialled numbers that the problem was with the ‘recharge’ questions… I asked Sphamandla if you guys take into consideration that whoever took my father’s phone is out there using his airtime, and had probably even recharged the phone again?! That how was my father being penalised because another unknown person was using his phone????!!! We are basically left stuck between a rock and a hard place because of someone else’s, INCLUDING YOUR PEOPLE’S INCOMPETENCE, actions which my father is unable to take responsibility for!!!!!!!! We literally went around in circles with your “TEAM LEADER” who didn’t even know the name of his managers; WHO WERE CONVENIENTLY UNAVAILABLE WHEN WE ASKED TO SPEAK TO A MANAGER!!!! Sphamandla had to go and ‘check’ what the names of the managers were!!! Your “TEAM LEADER” DIDN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT YOUR COMPLAINTS PROCESS WAS WHEN WE ASKED HIM, HE TOLD US HE WOULD PUT US ON HOLD AND “CHECK” !! What was even worse was he didn’t even know the name of the CEO of Cell C was!!!!!! He put us on hold for close to 15 minutes because looking at how long we were on hold, clearly he went to get your information in a store room somewhere!!!!!!?????!!!! I work in the services industry and I have never in my life experienced such disgusting service. My father’s sim card has still not been activated. We couldn’t even blacklist the phone because of the stupid ‘security questions’!!!!! The service level was beyond ridiculous and aims to make life difficult for clients! I am courteously informing you that this letter in its entirety, with the names included below, will be posted on all social media platforms if this matter is not resolved immediately. Your “team leader” knows absolutely nothing about your company which in my opinion is a disgrace. He couldn’t even tell us how long we would have to wait for a response from your alleged complaint department if we lodged a complaint. Below you will find all the information about the other “team leaders” and “managers” we managed to get out of Sphamandla. Maybe there is someone in that company that can do something useful and provide us with the service we pay for.

TEAM LEADERS Sphamandla Ngcobo Sifiso Dlamini Kaylen Moodley Lulama Ndwandwe

MANAGERS Barend Putter Asiphe Mule Lisa Skhumbuzo Mbambo

Please also send us the call recording of that call we made. Sphamandla gave us the seriel number because apparently he as a “team leader” was unable to email the recording to us. ***

Your thoroughly disgusted and disappointed client,