********** activities on my Vodacom account

<p>I am having a very sad experience with Vodacom which is reflected in the copies of the two emails which are pasted below. May I just add that I had no feedback from Vodacom regarding a conclusion to the ********** activities which led to roughly R81500 being booked against my account. The contents of my emails to Vodacom follows:</p> <p>Gerrit Ferreira ********** />Jan 10 (7 days ago) <br /> <br />to customercare <br /> <br />Dear Vodacom,</p> <p><br />This mail is also sent to Hello Peter because I just cannot get any positive response from you. The next step is to find the email addresses of the Vodacom directors and to start sending them copies of my emails which will become more frequent as from this moment. I am not threatening you, I am telling you this up front that you know what the next steps will be (And believe me it is not so difficult to find the email addresses of your directors. I already followed this route before).</p> <p><br />Why am I quite mad at you? Please read the following:</p> <p><br />1. Wednesday 9 November 2016 @ 08:28: I received a message on my phone saying "Your sim swop order is generated". I did not ask for a sim swop and checked with Vodacom who said not to worry. There is nothing recorded on my accounts with you, but maybe somebody wants to ***** money from my bank account.<br />2. Wednesday 9 November 12:59: I received a second message saying "Your sim swop order is generated." This time I did nothing more due to Vodacom's first response.<br />3. Friday 11 November 18:44: I received the following message: "Dear Gerrit Ferreira, order 1- ********** 8064 has been generated on your profile and vetting referral 0 has been approved." I am working in Lesotho and spend hours in accumulated time calling Vodacom customer services for issues like this. I then eventually reached customer care on Monday 14 November to report this concern. Was issued a reference number 1- ********** 0996. I was informed that there was ********** activities happening on my accounts and that a forensic investigation was taking place. Vodacom informed me about two weeks later that no damaged were incurred and case was closed. This was obviously not correct because it will become clear from my further experiences that one of my sim cards was cloned and is now being used to ***** money from my account ending with number 4585.<br />4. I did not receive a statement and detailed account breakdown for the November debit order and after calling Vodacom yet again, they sent me a statement only. Calls hereafter to try to get a detailed breakdown of my invoices were not successful.<br />5. December statement and invoices indicated that I owed Vodacom R81 990.34 on the said .....4585 account for international calls Europe (R29 997.72) and international calls exceptions (R40 960.48). The total amount owed over and above the normal R478 (Including VAT) for this account is: R81 512.34. These calls were not made by me, as a matter of fact the sim card was not working after the original messages that a sim swop order was generated. It should also be mentioned that the account never during the last 20 odd months exceeded the smart S contract amount to my knowledge. And now the nearly R82 000 that I supposedly incurred.<br />6. I reported the ********** activity to Vodacom on 19 December at roughly 10:30 and was given reference number 1- ********** 945578 by somebody called Sufen who said it would take between 24 and 48 hours to resolve the issue.<br />7. By 23 December I did not receive any feedback from Vodacom and called again. I spoke to Margaret at 09:14 and when enquiring about the progress of the investigation, I was told that the case was not allocated to anyone yet.<br />8. I asked to speak to somebody who could escalate the case and was transferred to Thabisile at 09:20. who informed that that the case would be resolved latest by 28 December considering all the public holidays in-between.<br />9. By 29 December I still did not hear anything from Vodacom and called again. This time I was assisted by Travis who informed me that the case was still not assigned to anybody. I told him that the date of the debit order was nearing and that I was not going to pay the amount I was not responsible for and that Vodacom will not cause me a bad credit rating with returned debit orders. He mentioned that I can change my way of payment to cash from debit order and transferred me to the department that follows up on unpaid accounts.<br />10. I spoke to Felicia at 11:45 who cancelled my debit order and changed my way of payment to cash to ensure I will not have problems with returned debit orders. She also sent me banking details to allow me to pay for the fees I am responsible for.<br />11. On 29 December I transferred R6400 (Bit more than I owe Vodacom) to the Vodacom account. (It shows on my latest statement that it was received on 30 December).<br />12. I then transferred all excess money out of my account just to make sure that no unauthorised debits go through against this account.<br />13. The Vodacom debit order for the full R87899.08 was however debited against the account and RETURNED DUE TO INSUFFICIENT FUNDS. The only good from this is that Vodacom is not in possession of my money and can play the waiting game for how long they want to.<br />14. I called Vodacom AGAIN on 5 January 2017 and spoke to Hanil who kindly informed me that I should not worry and should not call before I did not receive a message from Vodacom regarding the outcome of the investigation. Very kind of him but for how long should a reasonable man wait for a response? It is today 10 January and still NO RESPONSE. !!!!!!!!!!<br />15. I received my Vodacom statements and invoices for payment end of January 2017 today and see that there are R30282. 50 (International calls) and R22894.78 (Airtime transfers) booked against the same ....4585 account. Where will this stop? Am I just expected to wait till Vodacom will respond? (And please don't call me before 21 January because I am abroad (Email me please), something that Vodacom mentioned before as a concern that I might have made the calls myself, although the sim in question never left South Africa and was never used to make any international calls throughout its contract life.</p> <p><br />I have the following concerns:<br />1. It seems as if Vodacom is just not responding, or if they are investigating this matter, is not communicating to me.<br />2. It is disturbing to stand in a Vodashop and to hear the number of people complaining about similar concerns. Their complaints may, or may not be valid - I know mine is, but is there a spate of ********** activities on Vodacom accounts happening? How confident can Vodacom be that what my accounts reflect are what I really spent. And more important, how can each customer be confident about this?<br />3. Why did I have to spend lots of money calling Vodacom South Africa customer services from Lesotho at my own cost (Many times without the call being answered) when I am not responsible for the ********** sim swop that obviously took place?<br />4. What is Vodacom doing to stop insiders, or outsiders to **********ly access any customer's account? While what is done is obviously not enough, what more will they do?<br />5. What will Vodacom do to fix this? I am tired of worrying nights and being unsure of what will happen next.</p> <p><br />Regards</p> <p><br />G T Ferreira</p> <p> </p> <p>My second mail just now:</p> <p> </p> <p>Gerrit Ferreira ********** />1:32 AM (10 minutes ago) <br /> <br />to customercare (Reference number was quoted)<br /> <br /> <br />I refer to ********** activities on my Vodacom account. This issue has not been resolved as on today. I have paid the part of my Vodacom account for which I am responsible, but the roughly R81500 which was incurred **********ly was obviously not paid.</p> <p><br />I have arranged with Felicia at your debtors department to pay the amount owed by me, which I did, as already mentioned. I am however getting regular messages from you reminding me to pay the outstanding amount (********** amount). Please make sure you do not cut my account due to reasons over which I have no control.</p> <p><br />So my request: Do not suspend my account due to non-payment. I did pay more than required and the only outstanding amount is under investigation.</p> <p><br />Regards</p> <p><br />G T Ferreira</p> <p> </p> <p>I have a feeling that my account is already suspended, but cannot really check because I am out of country. It is just sad that I hear nothing from Vodacom and that I receive regular messages regarding making arrangements to pay my "outstanding" bill. I am also very unhappy about my credibility being affected by this issue and even more so by the thought that it is possible that a sim card can be cloned, or something done to it to give ********** access to my account. I see it as liability to the client from Vodacom's side that something like this can happen to the account of one of their clients (Although it seems like I am not the only one).</p> <p>I hope you will be successful to get some response from Vodacom.</p> <p> </p> <p>I will be back in South Africa by Saturday morning effectively and therefore also requested Vodacom to respond to my email address till then, if I will be so lucky that they will (And just for the record: The sim card of the account in question never left S.A. and I never made international calls with it. I have another account which is open for roaming and on which I do make calls internationally. This account is well controlled till now and not referred to in my emails above)</p> <p> </p>