How Vodacom Treats their Loyal Customers

Recently my cellphone contract was coming to an end. At this time I wanted to move to a prepaid contract while I reviewed other potential vodacom contracts. I remembered that my contract was opened in the April (2 years prior) so to avoid vodacom placing me on a month to month contract (which was pretty much the same price of my previous contract) I called the customer service line in April to ask that they cancel my contract. The call centre agent I spoke to informed me that my contract only ends in August and that I can only call 30 days before the contract end date to cancel my contract as she can not cancel it for me at this time. As i was sure I opened the contract in April 2 years before, I was a bit confused but agreed and said I would call back in July.

I called back in July but was informed that in fact I could have cancelled this in April as that was when my contract ended. More than that I had been moved (without my consent) to a month-to-month contract for the past 3 months.

Completely shocked I asked if I could speak to the complaints department as I would like to open a query based on the fact that I was refused the right to cancel my contract, I was moved to month-on-month contract without my consent and I could have been paying off 3 months of a new cellphone contract. The complaints department opened a dispute for me and stated that I would be credited the amount and the funds should reflect within 6 weeks.

After this phone call I got an SMS stating that a dispute has been opened with a reference number. A few moments later, I got another SMS saying that the dispute is closed. Assuming that it was closed because the call centre had informed me of the outcome I left it as is. A few weeks later (noticing the funds did not reflect) i called in to customer service to get an idea of when to expect the funds. I was told that the funds will not be paid back as I used the data and airtime for each month and that the query had been closed. I would just like to say that no feedback was ever given stating the outcome of the dispute! I opened a few more queries to only have this happen again and again. I called back insisting to speak to someone who can help me but received rude service with the line 'dropping' while being transferred to the 'relevant departments over 3 times! Eventually getting through to some department they told me that I needed to provide proof and recordings of the conversation I initially had. Obviously I told them that they would have the recordings as I don't record my phone calls. I even asked that they send me the recordings but they refused and kept on saying that i need to give them the recordings.

I have been a customer of vodacom for 13 years now and I was shocked to see how rude and disgraceful their customer service is. This will be forwarded to ICASA where a request will be made to have the recordings evaluated by an ICASA representative. I would never recommend vodacom to any friend, family or colleague. The funny thing is that I used to rave about Vodacom, but after this, MTN here I come!