Ending Vodacom issues

When a customer reaches out to ‘hellopeter’ it usually means that the customer has reached the end of the line in trying to reason with the service provider. I have reached this point with Vodacom. From visiting a branch to many calls back and forth to Customer care which might I add , the consultants are not at fault as they try their best to assist you within their capacity , it is the lack of senior management or support that really is quite frustrating. I am actually awaiting a call from a Vodacom ‘manager’ since I escalated my complaints yesterday.

The email I am about to post that I had sent to Vodacom customer care will explain the various issues I have been experiencing with Vodacom with the most recent being left out is that my Fibre consultant failed to explain to me how billing for Fibre will start in the interim of actually having fiber up and running.

[ Dear Sir/Madam

I hope that you are well.

I am writing this email with a request to the head office or to any department that can assist me regarding the issues I am experiencing.

In May 2021, I took out a sim-only data contract with Vodacom as I had been waiting for Fibre (the digging process had started) in my area and I had cancelled my Telkom ADSL line.

I did ensure that LTE coverage was of a good standard in my area and was also assured of this by the sales representative that I had dealt with for fibre as well as the LTE Data Sim. However, the unfortunate reality is that since the beginning I have been experiencing connection issues. This severely impacts my livelihood and employment as I teach online from home. These connection issues had meant that I had to buy MTN data to complete my lessons and thus my expenses have increased exponentially. We were offered many deals for Fibre in the area and had chosen Vodacom for our Fibre deal. Vodacom then offered us a 100GB interim data until fibre arrives with a data only sim that connects to the router given to us. This was a good initiative, but due to the severe lack of connectivity, even during non peak hours, this was hardly used (as confirmed with Vodacom fibre department at least thrice) as the connection was continuously unstable and poor. Besides the grievances regarding the LTE network issues , I have also had to query my billing and usage with Vodacom within the first 3 months of usage. The first month's billing was fine, however, for the next three months my billing was erratic. In August, I was billed R366, however, I was only supposed to be billed R299. Today, I was billed R909!! That is approximately triple of what I was supposed to be charged! Another issue I faced was that Vodacom has not provided me with statements since the very beginning of my contract. When I queried this at the Vodacom store in Pavillion, I was given 3 statements for R309, but these statements DO NOT match up with the payments that had been debited from my account. Further than that, when I queried itemised billing and data usage, the branch was unable to provide this to me.

As a way forward I am still going to be going with Vodacom Fibre however I am requesting that Vodacom cancel my Data only contract in place of the Fibre deal and to refund me the R600 that was taken from my account unduly.

I do not feel comfortable knowing that my data contract proves to be problematic and that I still have 20 months left to deal with these issues.

I am certain that someone in head office/ management can assist me with my request.

Regards ]

To have this many complaints as a customer within 4 months is totally unacceptable. I will not rest until I have a senior person contact me and sort ally issues out.