Be very careful when you agree to a VODACOM upgrade over the phone. The agreement is indeed with a third party!!

Vodacom's interest and commitment to solve customer complaints, if they prove to be slightly out of the norm, is non-existent. I reviewed my contract (which incidentally has been running on a month to month for a while) and found it no longe suited my needs. I phone customer service to cancel my contract and was put through to a very lovely lady who enquired as to why I wanted to cancel etc (this department turned out to be"retentions"). She convinced me to rather change my contract to a cheaper one and one which suited my needs better. She also offered to review my other contracts and possibly change them to better suit my usage and need patterns. Needless to say I was charmed by the great service. However once the contracts had been concluded, the nightmare began: Numerous calls to resolve my complaints to Vodacom were dropped as a result of really bad signal (another issue that Vodacom has never addressed despite numerous complaints, including communal complaints). The one phone that was sent with the contract appeared to have a software problem and I could never instate and use it. when I wanted to return it, Vodacom said that it was 3 days past the cool_off period and they refused to exchange it. The second phone never arrived. I was told by Vodacom that no one was available to receive the phone. (For the very complicated details of this story interested parties may contact me privately ) ..........Vodacom customer service was not interested in solving my issues, so 2 months later, I took a day off and drove to Vodacom headquarters in Midrand to sit face to face with an agent until my issues had been resolved. To my great surprise I found out that when you phone Vodacom customer service and then get put through to what you think is still part of customer service, is in fact retentions (no-one tells you that they are an inaccessible department from cyberspace) and customer service cannot do much about issues. After some intense moments the consultant phoned Vodacom Direct (who concluded the upgrade and told me that they were Vodacom Direct and therefore cheaper than most Vodacom Agents) and then told me Vodacom direct is just another independent Vodacom agent and therefore Vodacom customer service cannot help me. After having contacted Vodacom direct, the agent on the line then told me that they had subcontracted my upgrade to yet another company called Elite Mobile. Can you guess where this is going?? Yes Vodacom parent company takes no responsibility it appears for contracts that are concluded via their customer service, who unbeknown to the customer, puts one in touch with second and third parties. Shocked at this incredibly bad attitude from Vodacom and after some hours of driving to midland from Brits, spending some hours and finally only walking away with a promise that Elite mobile would contact me to resolve the problem, I decided be civil and await the promised phonecall. Elite called once and I actually requested the voice recording - something that the customer is threatened with when one talks to Customer service. Well, this was the last time anyone contacted me. Shame on Vodacom and all its invisible agents - I wonder how many people would not sign up contracts when they know that Vodacom Direct and anyone else is NOT Vodacom's problem or responsibility.