Inflated bill on Upgraded Account

ESCALATION REF NO. ***

Good day,

On the 20-Nov at 14h55, I was contacted by an agent with the offer to upgrade my Top-Up account. I was told that I would be paying less than my current rate, yet reap the benefit of more data. What I had constantly reiterated during that call is that I prefer having the Top-Up account for the fact that I will not be surprised by a huge bill at the end of the month. I prefer to buy extra data when I've depleted my data bundle.

The agent reassured me that my new account will be fixed at the monthly rate, and should that data be depleted, I would need to call into the call centre to request the amount (airtime/data/smses) that they need to load onto my account which will be added to my monthly bill. (If you extract my call, you will hear that I constantly reinterated that this was indeed the case). With it being the 20th, I was informed that I will be billed on the new contract for the remaining 10 days of Nov (which made perfect sense). Before ending the call, I asked for a reference number which the agent told me will be SMSed/emailed to me. I did indeed receive 2 SMSes stating that my account was upgraded, but no reference number was attached.

Today, I received an SMS stating that my account will be debited with double the amount. When contacting that agent, I was informed that I had an open account to the value of R300+ which will be automatically billed should I exceed my monthly data bill.

1) This was never explained to me and was the very thing I repeated to the agent over and over again that I did not want.

2) If at the 20 Nov, my old account was standing on 971MB, and I would get a calculated amount of data and bill for the remaining 10days of Nov, how is it that this new account bill was calculated at just over 100% my new monthly bill?

Zee, the agent who I had just spoken to today (who raised this escalation), advised that she had now changed my account on the system to a closed account where I would need to call in to load additional airtime. She has now corrected my account to what I had agreed to on 20 Nov, however, I am left to fit the bill that cannot be explained.

On 01 Dec, I was debited with the old account amount, and according to the SMS that I received today, as at the 01 Dec, my outstanding balance due at 31 Dec is more than double my monthly fee.

Zee (agent of today) advised that I had exceeded my data bundle and have been charged on the open account. I need Cell C to explain to me how/where I had exceeded my account and how this bill of 10 days can be double what I would pay for 1 month.

When requesting an email address of a team leader to escalate my query to, I was informed that the call was logged and that I will be contacted within the next 48hrs. I was told that I may contact the Call Centre again and quote the said escalation reference number should I need to follow-up. As it is the busiest time of the year, I do not have time to rehash the same issue days later and find it unacceptable that issues cannot be escalated to an actual customer to supervisor/manager. As all calls are recorded, I am expecting that my call received on 20 Nov at 14h55 be listened to and that this matter be addressed. I have even tried to raise this issue on the Cell C "Contact Us" page which allows for a certain number of characters only.

Should I receive no response from Cell C and my account is debited of this account, I will open up a case of ***** and take matters further.

Awaiting your response.

Regards, Alicia Africa