Bad Service

Our fibre service was interrupted on Wednesday evening, 29 September 2021, We notified Vodacom immediately informing them to bear in mind that we work from home and no work no pay policy applies. We received a Service request number. We Reached out to them a day later, Thursday 30 September, they indicated 2 to 4 days turnaround time before we receive attention, again we reminded them that we work from home. On Saturday, 2 October, we had still not heard from them and called again. A call centre agent said they would escalate the matter to their resolution team. We waited.

Later in the afternoon of Saturday, 2 October, we reached out again, worrying about the fact that we had already lost 2 days of work and that Monday was approaching. After holding on for an agent to reach out to the resolution team again, for almost 2 hours by the way, still no resolution team response.

Much later on the same day, we received a call to say that a technician will have to be despatched to the property. The availability of the technician, 14 October. I am dead serious.

Monday morning, 4 October, reached out again. Back and forth, Vodacom blaming Octotel etc. We explained that we could possibly loose our jobs as we still had no connection. This went on up until Thursday, 7 October, we received a call from a Vodacom technician informing us he would be available Friday 8 October. By this time, we had tapped into other resources to confirm if it was the actual fibre line or Vodacom’s line. It was confirmed that there was no issues with connectivity from Octotel side, Octotel confirmed that should it have been their issue, they have a 24 hour turnaround for a technician to sort out the issue or at least to report to the property. So indeed this was a Vodacom issue.

One of the Vodacom team leaders reached out to during this period, apologising but also not been able to get their resolution team to commit to fixing the issue.

On Friday 8 October, Vodacom technician report to the property, spent all of 15 minutes and replacing the router.

What a nightmare. We though we would lose our jobs. Employers cannot understand how this delay could be possible, this is after all VODACOM, one of the supposedly top service providers in this industry.

I have been a client of Vodacom since 2004, and have never experienced this level of inadequacy ever.

We requested a letter or statement for Vodacom, as confirmation of the event. To show our employer that this indeed was not our fault, still waiting for that.

I have full intention of changing service providers.

Should anyone be considering using Vodacom dibre as a service provider, please think hard especially if you work from home.