Chatz Cellular Vodacom Greenstone: How not to treat customer.

<p> </p> <p>I'm really not the type of person to go and find forums to vent my frustration at a store/business as everyone has it tough, nothing is easy in this world but the past week has really left me with no other option... I'm really at dire straights... I wonder if Vodacom will even care to resolve this matter for me even now.</p> <p> </p> <p>Here's the blow by blow -</p> <p>My experience with Chatz Cellular has been nothing short of a disaster. We are into day 6 of the seemingly never-ending saga. To think this started with me wanting to bring business to Vodacom not only in my personal capacity but to my ever growing tech business.</p> <p> </p> <p>My experience started with me walking into Chatz Cellular to open up a contract. Initially I did get a bad feeling about using this branch (for no particular reason), it was simply the attitude by which i was greeted with. As if I was wasting the guys time...(did not get the name so thats a fail on my part - didn't think I would need to actually). Eventually I was able to get a seat to fill in my application form, now you must remember opening up a contract getting a new phone is quite a cool experience you know being a techy like myself I was filled with excitement....the feeling soon went away with the help I received from the staff member I was with.</p> <p>Please remember I'm filling in an application form and I am quite educated I'd say so I understand that when filling in a form which can turn into binding contract I want to understand what I am signing however the agent I was assigned to clearly didn't care enough... I asked more then one question because I was not sure, this proceeded to tick off the staff member who got more and more unhelpful the further the encounter dragged on. He remarked "just fill it in because it's required" - is this how customers are spoken to when they don't understand? Why could he not answer my questions? Was I not good enough to get a expected response of help? I'm really not sure... In any case I managed to get through the form while he joked around with his colleagues and making it as difficult as possible to get any sort of assistance. He then gave me the "don't call me I'll call you" line regarding when my application would get approved (clearly I should have known then that this was going to be nothing but downhill from there.) Stupid me I believed him, he told me expect a call Monday or Tuesday latest so that seemed reasonable, I left with a great feeling I would be getting my contract, this staff member would sort it out eventhough the experience was not great I let it go maybe the guy was not having a good day, maybe he doesn't like the look of my face who knows - I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Who would have known this was just the beginning...</p> <p> </p> <p>Monday came and nothing happened.... I thought nothing of it because I know that things like this can take time to sort out etc etc. Tuesday came and today was meant to be the day... I waited and waited for a phone call nothing so around 3PM that day I decided let me call the branch at Greenstone Chatz Cellular Vodacom. I go online to Vodacom's website and find the number to call and find out what is going on with the application I don't have all the time in the world to go and collect a phone. There were 2 numbers on the website... BOTH go straight to "the number you have dialed does not exist", thanks Vodacom... for a cellular provider that is quite shameful not being able to keep up to date numbers on the website - something to think about. </p> <p> </p> <p>So my next point of call is to say "stuff this", I'll open an application on Vodacom's website - dealing with computers in my industry is a lot easier then humans sadly. With the nature of the business I run I need this sorted out ASAP. So i proceed to visit the website and fill in the details and get to the end I enter my OTP in and eventually I get a message at the saying "Previous Approved application for customer exists ( ********** 5).Please do a dealer ID Swap from 49324". No idea what to do here no one is getting back to me, no mention of how to do this "dealer swap" is on the website. So i fill it in again and instead i ask for a call back.</p> <p>Within the next hour or so i get a call from Melissa from the sales department and she tries to assist me online and gets the same message she says I need to be put forward to customer service they can assist me in the dealer swap so OK put me through to them... eventually I get through to them after a dropped line I had to find the customer service number to call you guys, waste my airtime....The guy on the other end says he can't assist me. I must speak to the sales department...bear in mind this is the previous persons department so clearly NO ONE at Vodacom knows how to deal with a dealer swap... he then puts me through after I had to explain more than once that I had already been referred by sales to his department and back I was at Sales... This was again referred back to customer service it gets quite comical this story how badly co-ordinated your departments are... the new customer service agent flat out refused to assist me and I am not a horrible person I was quite taken aback at the treatment i received by him. To top off the experience I had with this guy when i enquired about his name he simply hanged up to keep himself out of trouble I would imagine, thats fine i guess karma will come back to him one day. Now im fed up with the "customer service" Vodacom had to offer me. Side note: You guys pay for people to treat your customers this way it's a bit crazy but they need to work somewhere it's simply funny how it is all in one business it seems. I gave it a break for Tuesday....</p> <p> </p> <p>Wednesday came along and I had received no follow ups nothing had been done from Vodacom's side. I would not be surprised if leaving customers in the dark is a common thing after this experience. So around 2pm i decided ok to social media I go. I log in to my twitter account and explain in as brief as possible the service i have received so far. Back and forth Vodacom and I are communicating... extremely generic messages from their side of things "so sorry to hear about your experience please let us know your number so we can help". So that seemed good i provided my number to get a phone call from someone in the social media handle @vodacom111 the sign off was ^LK whoever that is. He said after he phoned me that Tebogo the manager of the Chatz Cellular Vodacom at Greenstone outlet would get hold of me within the next 10 mins to resolve this application for me. So i thought great finally someone is doing something Twitter is obviously the only way to get things done. Needless to say im sure you can guess the next part of this Tebogo didn't bother getting hold of me. I waited and waited and waited absolutely nothing was done. So ok i thought i will get hold of the other Vodacom store in Greenstone perhaps they can help me. I emailed ********** to which i got a lovely response from Marco there who said he had escalated this complaint to head office and he let me know he is going over to the other store to get my application from them as I explained my frustration and simply just wanted this to be resolved clearly the the Chatz Cellular Vodacom branch was not willing to help me so WHY should they get any sort of cut in this deal.... SIMPLY NOT HAPPENING. Marco then provided me his phone number and I must give him a call which i thought was great he then answered and assured me everything would be sorted out I can trust him. I left it at that.</p> <p> </p> <p>Today Thursday the 2nd of February, the Vodacom support twitter team tweeted me "Apologies for the late response:-( Has the store made contact with you to resolve your query? ^CM" To which i rep**** No, i then got a phone call from a gentlemen said he was from the social media team how can he help. So i explained the situation and he proceeded to tell ME to phone the store directly... seriously?!?! I told him he could do that for me as by now im actually quite annoyed by this whole experience. He said that was fine and told me that Tebogo would give me a call.</p> <p> </p> <p>This is where Vodacom went out of their way to provide the worst experience I have ever received from any company of any kind. "Tebogo" called me .... she was EXTREMELY unhappy at the way I have been speaking about her store. "How dare I give her store a bad name", "how dare i lie about her staff", apparently my APPLICATION does NOT even exist according to her. Clearly it does considering the system won't let me open one online. She told me I am lying and then spoke in a language I am not fluent in so I cannot tell what was said. I hardly had time to even let her know what my complaint was... She slammed the phone down on me before I could even let her know. The only question i managed to answer was yes I am Ben. Apparently I have done so much wrong to be treated this way. Trying to support the Vodacom brand has seriously been difficult. You know at this point in time I don't know if I will ever be able to open a contract with Vodacom because i still get the error that my application has already been approved.... HOW CAN I RESOLVE THIS? Does this Tebgogo at Vodacom Chatz Cellular Greenstone treat all customers this way? I think Vodacom should consider how viable she is as a manager because it is affecting their brand and I will continue to post to comment and make a thing of this until Vodacom sort this out for me.</p> <p> </p> <p>To end this off, i sent a tweet to the support team on twitter they seem to be the only ones who bother replying (although it is after quite a long time they reply) explaining how Tebogo acted on the phone. You will never believe the reply I got... Its one for the books"We do apologize for the inconvenience. Did the store make contact with you? ^CM" Like seriously???</p> <p> </p> <p>I am quite shocked at the treatment I have received from Vodacom. I will continue to take this up the ladder if nothing is done. I have the means to do it and will make sure that people are held accountable, I don't think Vodacom deserves to have its brand tarnished by employees who wish to tarnish its reputation with customers. </p> <p> </p> <p>Vodacom your turn? What do you have to say about this?</p> <p> </p> <p>Kind Regards</p> <p>Ben</p>