In-store upgrade - bad service, outdated information

This past weekend, my wife and I visited our local Cell C outlet with the intention of upgrading her month-to-month Cell C package, to a contract for R299 per month which includes an iPhone SE with 10GB data. We were met by Thabo, who told us that it would not be a problem to do this and suggested that we return to the store on the 31st of October - he said that she only needed to bring her ID Document for this to happen.

Yesterday, we returned to the store and were met by one of the ladies on duty, I believe her name was Phumzile if I recall correctly - and we started the process for the upgrade. She seemed somewhat confused at our requirement, which was simply to move the package from month-to-month to the R299 iPhone SE contract. Once the requirement was understood, we were given the necessary documentation to sign. The paperwork had no section pertaining to monthly income and expenditure - in terms of the applicant's financial standing or credit worthiness.

Once the preliminary paperwork had been completed and signed, the lady proceeded to make a phone call, to what I can only assume was Cell C head office. She did not advise us who she was phoning, or what the call was about. After about twenty to thirty minutes wait, the lady wrapped up the phone call and advised us that my wife's application was declined - because she was apparently "over committed" financially and would not be able to afford the R299 monthly cost. This assumption was seemingly based on old information obtained from when my wife initially took out a contract with Cell C years ago - at which point she had a different job and earned a substantially smaller salary than she has for the past few years. Despite the fact that she earned less money years ago, she was never in financial trouble or had any kind of credit related problems. The irony also lies in the fact that my wife already pays roughly R200 per month for the current month-to-month deal and this contract would have only cost an additional R99 per month.

Part of the problem lies in the fact, that Cell C did not ask for any updated information, new financial records such as payslips or bank statements and rather declined an application based on an assumption or an estimate of my wife's financial situation which was seemingly based on information from many years ago. I also find it unprofessional that the Cell C sales attendant did not say or nor did she explain what she was doing during the phone call - had she said something along the lines of she is doing a credit check, or waiting for approval - we would naturally have inquired about the accuracy of their records. In the end, this was a huge waste of time and we were told to go the a bank to provide Cell C with bank statements as proof that my wife's financial standing or income was not the same as the outdated information they had on file. This was not convenient to us since there were long queues at the bank at this time, and the Cell C store would have closed for the day by the time that we had obtained the statements.

We will simply take our business elsewhere since Cell C doesn't seem to be interested in our business nor providing good service.