MTN's aversion to resolve my queries

MTN agents are once again showing incompetence. I have been repeatedly called by sales agents to upgrade my contract for the past few months. My contract ended yesterday (16 Oct 2024). Each time they called me, I have requested my contract to be downgraded to a prepaid number. Back in August, an agent told me that I will have to call in the final month of my contract, which I did.

The cancellations agent then told me that because I called in the same month of the contract end date, I will have to await the final bill in November. He promised that the downgrade will be done on the 1st November. I agreed, but was upset because the previous person gave me misinformation.

My monthly contract amount was R378 (top-up contract), which meant that I get a stipulated amount of data and airtime. Once it runs out, i will have to top up as usual, so I dont get billed for any calls and data usage outside this R378. This morning I received an SMS from MTN :

"Y'ello! Your contract term has ended. Your contract is changing from R126.09 to R 154.783 on a month-to-month term. All promos have expired."

This was strange as none of those figures quoted reflects my billing history, so I called to clarify. The cancellations agent today (Bongani) confirmed that I have made a request to cancel in my previous call, and that the downgrade will take place on the 1st November 2024. He could not answer my questions related to the SMS received, and transfered the call to a billing / accounts agent (Zethu) who was clueless about my query, so I had to go through the security questions and explain my query once again. This is something really frustrating that MTN seems to get wrong all the time.

Zethu could not explain why R126.09 to R 154.783, but quoted a R398 which confused me even further. She then asked to terminate the call because the call is going on too long, and promised to call me back. I refused because I have found MTN agents to be unreliable and they have **** to me countless times about callbacks. I asked if she could email a confirmation of my request to cancel my account and downgrade to prepaid. I said I would hang on until I see the email reflecting on my side. She agreed, but then dropped the call when I asked for her surname.

As I am typing this complaint, I have not yet received a confirmation from her or from MTN. I have had numerous bad experiences with MTN, due to their lack of service. On the most basic level, the communication is very bad. The agents are not trained well in objection handling and have an extremely high aversion to problem solving. This applies to team managers and I suppose higher levels of management as well.