MTN - appalling service/ impossible to cancel contract!

My data contract expired 12/12/2020. I an trying to convert the contract to prepaid and it’s proving to be impossible.

Here follows a chronological record of events:

04/12/20: I emailed *** to cancel my contract as was going to expire 12/12/2020. Duduzile Lengane rep**** and said the following: Kindly note that we require a 30 days' notice for contract cancellations should you wish to terminate the number completely from the network. Should you wish to convert the number to prepaid, you can call in a day after the contract expiry date, as prepaid migrations are actioned immediately upon request.

So I decided that I’d rather not cancel the contract, but convert it to prepaid.

12/12/2020: I emailed customer care to request that my contract be converted to prepaid. I phoned 083135 but it was over a weekend and the offices were closed.

No one rep****.

14/12/2020: I emailed customer care again to reiterate that I want to convert to prepaid.

I phoned 083135 three times during office hours. Most of the operators were extremely unprofessional and unwilling to assist. On the one call I was transferred 6 times to different people. Some of the excuses were that the operator did not have access to “the new system”; so could see my profile, but could not change anything. When you are transferred to cancellations/retentions the phones rings and rings and no one answers.

I went to the MTN store at Paddocks mall in Milnerton and was advised that nothing can be done in store.

Late last night I received a reply from Takalani Tshivhase who said the following: Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience incurred. Kindly be advised that this query has been escalated to the Retentions/Cancellations department and they will contact you for feedback. You may also email them on ***.

I sent the e-mail trail to retentions. No one from retentions has contacted me as yet.

15/12/2020: I emailed customer care x 3 and retentions x 1 with no response today.

I phoned 083135 six times. The excuses - no access to the “new system”; the system is down for maintenance. These calls lasted 14, 18, 19, 29 min. The rude operator that said his system is down for maintenance said that I should phone back at 19:00; when I phoned back the lady confirmed that cancellations/ retentions close at 17:00 and that I should phone on Thursday (I had said this to the rude operator, but he got really irritated that I questioned his working hours). The 29 min call I ended because that was the waiting time to (not) get through to cancellations as no one was answering.

16/12/2020: Boitumelo Phakedi from customer care responded with the following generic email: Thank you for emailing Customer Care. Apologies for the delayed response. Please contact 135 and select option 3 for contract cancellation. Our Retentions help desk will assist you. Their email address is : ***. They are open from Monday to Friday, from 8am until 5pm. They are closed on weekends and public holidays. You may request your number to be migrated to prepaid after termination. They require 30 days notice of cancellation.

Clearly not reading or understanding my email. Just responding with a standard unhelpful response. Dialing 083135 is not the problem. Getting through to the retentions department is impossible!

17/12/2020: Phoned 083135 again today. Spoke to Bruce in morning who said that he will send a request for retentions to call me as they are currently not taking any calls!!! He promised that I’ll get a call before the end of the day. Of course I didn’t.

In the meantime I’m being billed for a service I’m not using. It is not fair or acceptable that a bill will be sent for the pro rata data from when the contract expired until Thursday (that is, if I can get through to the cancellations department which thus far has been impossible).

I understand everyone is stretched/ burnt out due to COVID and maybe the staff resources have been de-escalated. But the culture at MTN 083135 is really appalling and unacceptable.