When you are sold something you cannot use

I have had the worst experience with Telkom. So a in February 2017 Telkom had a Big Deal sale. 15G for R300.00. I ordered one and got it in early March. So when i tried to have the sim card activated it took them the whole of March to activate it. On the 23 March i got a call from Telkom saying that my sim card had been activated since 21 March so i asked why is still cannot use it. This lady then checked the area where i stay and only then was i informed that the area i live in i cannot use the product. Just incompetence after incompetence. This is however just the start of my trouble. Right there i told this woman that i wish to cancel this Big Deal and she told me she will log a query. Meanwhile they just kept taking money out of my bank account and the thing is it was even more than the R300.00 that the deal was sold for. About a month after me saying i want to have it cancelled they told me that they need the product back before they can cancel it. 2 Months would pass before they finally picked up the Product in 14 June.

Finally in October 2017 they told me that the product has been cancelled. So after more than half a year of struggling i finally though this was the end. This was after query after query had been logged and nothing was done. I asked them to pay back the money they kept taking out of my bank account because i never used the product because i could not as i was not informed of this when they sold it to me. They told me they would pay back my money but it would take 7-10 days. So imagine my surprise when the morning of 6 October 2017 i got a strange sms from the bank. Money was paid into my account but my balance read R1.94. So after work i went to the Atm to see what is going on with my account and lo and behold my account was R1.94. So the Saturday morning i went to the bank and they told me that telkom paid back my money but then cleared my whole bank account.

I got ahold of telkom and they told me it would be sorted out and my money would be returned to me. A few days later i got an sms from telkom saying that my account was in arrears. When i contacted they back they told me i had to pay for early cancellation of the product.

So what they actually told me is they sell stuff to people under false pretenses just to get moeny out of them to pay for their mistakes. if the mistake was mine i would have paid the money gladly, but how do you sell something to someone and not tell them they cannot use it.

This is the worst experience i have had. I cannot believe that these companies get away with robbing people blind. Is there really nothing one could do to protect yourself? Not even your bank can protect you! What is a person to do?!