Unresolved queries

I signed up for a black Friday deal - someone phoned to sign me up. The contract I agreed to was R499 per month. I was told I would be invoiced from the date I received the sim card.

I received my sim card on 17 December and my billing date was 11 December-11 January. I thus expected the 1st invoice to be less than R499. I received my first invoice which came to a total of R1 304.

Firstly I only received my invoice by going online because the company who signed me up didn't put my correct email address (but that is minor in the bigger scheme of my irritation). On 22 January I queried my account because of the cost and I was informed by the person I spoke to that MTN charge a full month's fee in the first month with no applicable discount - hence the R999 additional charge on my account. I disputed that this was never explained to me and I did not agree to it. I was given reference number ***.

On 29 January I received a notification my query had been resolved. I phoned in to be told that my above query had not been escalated and there was no further result on it. The person then said he would urgently escalate the query again, after I really lost my cool on the phone, and I was given another reference number of ***. I warned the consultant that my debit order is due to go off on 1 February and should I not get a resolution to my query I would be forced to block the debit order as it is for R999 more than I should be paying.

I again received a notification that my issue had been resolved and as you have to phone in to get the result I duly phoned in, to be told the system was down and to phone back later. I duly did and I was told that a credit of R400 odd rand had been credited to my account (although when I phone in and the teleprompter automatically gives you your balance it was still R1304). I again explained the entire situation and insisted that my invoice should be less the R499 as I was paying a pro-rata and had never been told about an extra month charge. Eventually I was put through to a supervisor who I re-explained everything to. She promised to phone me back.

A consultant then did phone me back. He took me to the terms and conditions which state I will pay the applicable fees as explained to me - I again explained I had never been told about additional charges. He then referred me to the terms and conditions which I duly went to on the website and no where does it state the MTN policy to charge a full month's charges upfront. I pointed this out and questioned - if I was never told of this policy and it doesn't appear anywhere in writing, how can I know it applies and how can you charge me for it. He then said a sales person would have to listen to my phonecall and ensure I was never told about it. He told me I would receive a response within 2-72 hours and gave me the reference number of ***. I again re-iterated that as this dispute is going on, should it not me resolved I would have to block the debit order. He agreed to this. He also confirmed the credit of R400 odd rand was applicable on the account already.

I never received any feedback and thus on Monday I duly returned the debit order of R1 304 (the credit the previous two consultant's referred to had not even carried through). I phoned back Wednesday - 5 days after my query - and was told that there were no notes on the system with my query and thus it seemed no sales consultant had listened to my initial phone call.

I don't know what more to do to resolve this issue and am left with no alternative than to keep returning the MTN debit orders until this is resolved. I have spent hours on the phone trying to resolve this matter and the frustrating thing is every time I phone in I get a different person assisting me and I have to start explaining my story from the beginning. I am a diligent payer of all my accounts but do not think I should have to pay R999 to MTN when I never agreed to - no other service provider does this.

I am a brand new customer of MTN and this experience is just shocking. My last alternative is to post on this platform and hope that someone from MTN cares enough to respond to it and then I will have to take to social media.