**************** AT VODACOM FESTIVAL MALL

I went to Vodacom on Festival Mall in Kempton Park to purchase data for our employees' xmas gift. What a nightmare!

First they said to me that they needed some form of identification for me to purchase data for reason that they would know who to contact in the event that the money doesn't clear into their account even after explaining to them that a gift card is just the same as cash more than twice. Since I did have one immediately, I asked a fellow employee I was traveling with if I could use his, which we did. While I was back from the car to get the identity document, Katlego was finishing up with the transaction. When I got back, they were already done with the invoicing and since I had left the company gift card with her, she had already swiped the payment out. Looking at the invoice total, I realised that something went wrong because it was not what we budgeted for. Looking into the invoice, Katlego had double-credited 6 of the employees' numbers provided with an extra 10gigs of mobile data. I immediately I notified her of the error she made, which she acknowledged. I then asked her to reverse the data and refund me because I needed the funds to purchase data from other networks as well, she said they could not she began to course me into getting the data because there is nothing they could do. (Vodacom? Such a big company?)

I left the office and went back to our office because I needed to inform the employees not to make use of the extra data they had received. I decided to call Vodacom client services for help who contacted Katlego. That is when I realised that she was lying to me that there was nothing they could do, she just did not want to refund us. I was told by the Vodacom consultant from client services to revisit the shop and that they would pay me. I drove 3 times (including the 16th which was a Sunday) from Pretoria (116km per day) to visit the office since I was already on leave, just to get this resolved since Katlego would continuously drop the call on me when I called the office number on the invoice; our employees for other networks were waiting for their data and we needed the refund to purchase the data.

On 12th of December, Katlego called me (this time I decided to start recording our conversations) and she said they had now managed to call back 50 gig from our employees but couldn't do the one because the data was already used up. She tried a lot to make me feel bad that she was going to pay for the data herself etc etc for which I said I was sorry that it had to come to that but we had to be debited as we needed to buy data for our employees. She then asked me to send her my banking details so that they can reimburse the funds. I sent the details to her on the 18th and after realising that there was no response, we called Katlego on the 19th and she said she can't access her e-mails because she doesn't have a phone that does e-mail (yet she gave us that e-mail address). My colleague then asked to talk to the manager who only identified himself as AK, who said they got the mail but they wanted the ID copy for the account number. I then rep**** to the mail with my passport attached to it. Still no payment was made into the account. I called the number on the invoice and immediately after realising it was me, they would drop the call.

Katlego then called to say they were not going to pay us back. They will load the 60gigs of data on one sim card and I must just come and collect it. The reason being that I committed ***** by using my colleague's driver's license when we purchased the data. I kept asking her if the funds did not reflect in their account which she confirmed it did yet they can't repay us. In the meantime, our other employees are waiting for their data. I was now convinced that Vodacom does not want to reimburse us for the data. We had to make a plan to get data for our employees. First they were playing the trick that our employees use up the data so that they would no longer retrieve it back, it did not work. They are now using every excuse they have just so that they do not pay us back for the mistake they made.

It has been 8 days now and such a big company as Vodacom can't perform such a simple transaction even if it was their fault to overcharge us. Why should we as customers suffer because of a mistake that the service provider made? First it is the Vodacom employee who made the mistake, then they acknowledge the mistake but say they can't pay us because they have to retrieve the data first. What an inconvenience... This is sad!