**** to and cheated by Vodacom!

I have been having a consistent challenge with Vodacom regarding airtime advances taken on my account since last year. I had purchased the device and SIM for my mother and am on a top up contract which allows the user to request for an airtime advance and it would thereafter get billed to the account holder’s monthly invoice. The first “high” bill I received was during December. I noticed that my debit was slightly higher and called in only to find out that an airtime advance was taken and not paid back therefore it got charged to my monthly bill. I accepted but asked if this option could be deactivated and the person I spoke to said that it was possible to do. They advised me that a request to have this done would be logged. Upon receiving my January bill, I noticed that it was high as well. I then called in and was told that another airtime advance was done and thereafter advised them about my request to have this option deactivated. The agent then told me that the service was not deactivated as per my request and also advised that this may have been due to a system failure on their side. This agent then told me that they would log two further requests; one for the deactivation to be done and one for a credit to be passed based on the advance that went through after I had requested for the deactivation. Upon receiving my February bill, I noticed that my initial billing for the month included yet another airtime advance however my debit ran off as per normal. I called in and spoke to a Team Leader named Sanele Magaselea. She explained that there was a mix-up regarding what had occurred and what was requested. She then explained that I was charged for airtime advance and I was credited for airtime advance which resulted in my “normal” bill as opposed to the lower bill. She then mentioned that I was supposed to be credited for two airtime advances and asked if I would like to receive this credit via airtime or if I would like for it to be credited to my account. I asked for it to be credited to my account and was told that this would take 14 working days to go through. I noticed at the end of April that nothing had happened with regards to my bill and called in. I was referred to another team leader named Noma Sibanyoni whom I dealt with for a few days. The information this team leader gave me showed clearly that she did not understand the processes of the company and when I asked her why she couldn't get simple things right, she mentioned that she was new to the department. Noma told me that all my bills were correct and contradicted everything that Sanele had previously explained to me. After numerous frustrating phone calls and hours of my time wasted with Noma, she eventually said that my billing was correct and when I asked for the dates of the airtime advances which were taken, she said the system did not keep information from last year. I then asked for her to retrieve that information from my itemized billing and she said that I would need to pay for each itemized bill to be sent through to me. This angered me as it meant that Noma offered me a solution which would cost me more money only to resolve something which I was incorrectly billed for to begin with! I am disgusted with Noma's service and believe that Vodacom needs to sort out their issues internally without me as a customer having to suffer the consequences. Upon this incidence, I have begun telling people about Vodacom and their horrible service in hopes that they should not have customers if they cannot honestly service them!