I honestly would prefer Telkom and no network than having to deal with Vodacom again.

<p>I understand that many are with Vodacom because of their network but let’s be honest if places like Telkom had better network coverage people would jump in a heartbeat. Vodacom knows this and so chooses to treat their paying customers like trash. Not only are they ridiculously expensive but they seem really not to care about the customer. Last month I upgraded my phone online because of how terrible the in store service I received was the last time I upgraded, but I will get to that later. I upgraded online because of how easy it was, after upgrading I even called their call centre to make sure that everything was in order and to ask questions. Within 24 hours received smses stating that because it was the end of the month (October 31st) my phone would be delivered but my number will only be migrated as of the 1st of December. Fine no problem. But one can imagine my surprise when on the 30th my phone is no longer working, no free minutes, no free smses, nothing! Basically if I had to heaven forbid have an accident I would be stranded. This was never explained to me when I upgraded and when I called the agent I spoke to on the phone when I asked about the 1st never mentioned it. I knew that I would lose whatever free minutes, data and smses that I had left. And let’s be honest that’s also a load of *******, if I paid for something and I remain in your network why are you taking it away? Why are we being punished for being loyal customers? Don't say that it is not possible you can make it possible. But at least I knew that that would be an eventuality. Anyway, I called customer care (111) and spoke to an agent. I explained to him the situation and he was very helpful at first. And wanted to know if my line was still working at all, something I did not know but assumed since I was making a call (albeit a free one) to him using the phone. He then said he would hang up and call me back and requested an alternative contact to reach me on if it did not work. I gladly obliged and gave an alternative number. We then hung up and I waited for about 10 minutes before I received his call. The line worked, great. He then proceeded to place my call on hold while he tried to sort out my problem. Only problem was that after about 5 minutes another agent answered the phone and I had to re-explain everything that I had just been through with the first agent. But despite the initial indication with the initial agent being that they could sort it out, the new agent told me that it was not possible. And that since my number is migrating I have lost whatever minutes and smses that I had left. I told the agent that the situation was unacceptable and I realise that this is not her fault but Vodacom’s. I asked her what I was supposed do and she said that I could purchase airtime. Right so now Vodacom has taken away something which was paid for a day early and now I must pay more money? That is simply ridiculous, there should be a facility in their network to be able to seamlessly migrate a number. To make matters worse when we eventually parted ways telephonically she put the questions in a language I did not understand. Please tell me what is the point of having a rating system after the call if things like this are going to happen? I was not going to give her a poor rating but I sure as hell was going to give Vodacom a 0 when they asked me if I would recommend them to anyone else. When I got the sms asking if all my queries had been answered I said No, promised a call back which came today. I sadly missed the call but received no messages about how I was to go about returning the call. <br /> <br /> This is extremely frustrating since, as I mentioned above, the in store experience I had two years ago was dismal. The guy kept on having to restart because he kept on making mistakes, ok fine he was new. But to make matters worse, he completely messed up the sim swop and I had to go around with a phone that didn't work for over a week. I was away shortly after getting the phone, so could not go back in store and since I had to no network I couldn't even call customer care. I had to contact my parents on my boyfriend’s phone (not a Vodacom customer) and get them to try sort it out. My Dad spent hours on the phone. And kept calling back and saying thing like, Vodacom says to reboot the phone, or Vodacom says turn the phone off and take out the sim then put the sim back and turn it on again. Nothing worked. He had called the store where I upgraded as well as customer care and they gave the same advice. He then went in and finally spoke to someone who actually seemed to know what they were doing. The original guy had completely messed up the upgrade / sim swop and so it hadn't even been processed. Thanks Vodacom 1 individual out of a whole stores worth who actually knows how to do their job.</p> <p>Vodacom may have the good coverage but even they won’t be able to keep customers with this level of service and with the prices they charge. Everyone I have spoken to about this has said how poor their customer relations are. Not a single person with a high opinion of them tells you something about the type of company it is.</p>