Bad information, now I'm stuck on Prepaid

I upgraded last year to a top up contract and didn't take a handset. Now I wanted to find out if I can upgrade my contract to a more expensive one to allow me to get more airtime and a new handset. I wanted to keep my number. The Vodacom store in Centurion and he call centre both told me I need to pay up my contract and then take out a new contract, which I reluctantly did.<br> <br> I am now on prepaid. I went to the online store to buy a new contract and got a message to say that a call centre agent will contact me. That was 2 weeks ago and I still have not received the call. I decided to call the contact centre to do the purchase over the phone.<br> <br> I was just told by the call centre that I cannot purchase a new contract and keep my existing number because there is a 6 month cool off period after switching to prepaid. My extreme annoyance and frustration is in the fact that this is the reason why I paid up my contract in the first place. Nobody told me about the cooling off period, and even if they had there is then no way for one to move from a cheap package to an expensive package in less than 6 months. I have no other choice but to port my number to another provider, as Vodacom will not