How to milk your customers

<p>For the attention of Vodacom South Africa</p> <p> </p> <p>I have just spent 30 minutes on the line with a lovely support agent – I cannot fault her as she was very understanding and helpful.</p> <p> </p> <p>I would however like to direct your attention to the ********* practices within your sales dept.</p> <p> </p> <p>I upgraded my contract in December 2016, and the chap who did my upgrade over the phone (speaking so fast at times, it now all makes sense..), did NOT explain that the limit that I had on my previous contract would not be carried over or implemented on my new contract.</p> <p> </p> <p>As a result, I have been billed R 1322 this month for “out-of-contract” data usage.</p> <p>Here is my issue: not once did I receive a notification from Vodacom that I was about to go out of contract data (which is bizarre too, as I am connected to wifi 99% of the time). If I had received this notification I could have avoided this bill that I actually cannot afford by making the decision to switch of my cellular data.</p> <p> </p> <p>I have since requested a migration to a plan where I will physically have to buy bundles when I am out of data (how I wanted to operate from the start) effective from the 1st of April, as funnily enough if Vodacom were to implement it with immediate effect I would be charged twice.</p> <p> </p> <p>Now the plan that I had wanted to be on was R670-somechange per month, and yet for the “capped” plan it is R 899 a month. I have to spend nearly R 300 more per month, to avoid your shady billing process!</p> <p> </p> <p>The amount of complaints relating to this exact issue online is huge and your own customer service department admitted to me that your sales team are only concerned with hitting their targets and not explaining to upgrade customers any implications of their new deals.</p> <p> </p> <p>I expect Vodacom to respond to this complaint by close of business tomorrow (9 March) and refund me the out-of-rate charges immediately.</p>