MECER Guru: paperweight or computer?

When Vodacom was originally announced I was the second person in George to purchase their phones ( two phones to be exact) to this day, many years later, I still have my exact same Vodacom phone number. My children who are all grown now, were still in school when they acquired their first and last Vodacom cell phone numbers. Needless to say I am the definition of a loyal customer. Regardless of this fact instead of being rewarded for my decades of undying loyalty, I am rather ******* and then ignored.

Why you might ask?

Vodacom was running a rewards promotion as of late last year, in which they "rewarded" their loyal customers by giving them a very special offer, a "wonderful new age smart MECER computer at a very affordable price". So as a strong believer in Vodacom's integrity and fidelity, Myself and my two daughters each purchased one.

Unfortunately I have to admit that I am gravely disappointed, I gifted my purchase to my granddaughter who is a first year student at Stellenbosch university, after much initial excitement on her behalf, we have come to learn that these wonderful Laptops are no better than a standard cellphone. My granddaughter can not complete any of her study work on them and that's not even mentioning their generic glitches and faults that all three ( my granddaughter, and my two daughters) experienced.

Some these glitches include, the @ symbol and the '' symbol being switched, the screen freezing, it not being able to connect to printing devices, after a while it doesn't want to connect to the internet, it is ridiculously susceptible to viruses and malware, its parts are as rare as blue-white diamonds and its all in all a horrible laptop.

When I tried to contact them regarding this issue of ours, first via telephone, I was sorely disappointed to find that the Afrikaans option ( to be assisted by and Afrikaans speaking representative) made me wait a full thirty minutes for assistance, before I, begrudgingly rather opted to be transferred to an English representative, where I was immediately assisted. This feels like a personal attack on Afrikaans speaking people, it seems like and explicit attempt to exterminate the Afrikaans language in all corporate matters. I find this deplorable because Vodacom has always re**** on their Afrikaans speaking members, furthermore they have always bragged about their multilingual services.

I then submitted a complaint to their customer care, on which they notified us that they received it. But they never made the effort to follow up on our complaint.

Now back to our complaint regarding the MECER Laptop, I'm not sure if their refrain is due to their embarrassment or if it's purely disregard, either way it is disappointing. Especially after they assured as that they did in fact receive our complaint and that it would be "sent through to management" this generic place holder of an excuse may be enough to quench some peoples dissatisfaction, yet unfortunately this wont suffice for me. Three of my beloved nearest are now unable to complete their work and school because they are financially stuck with these useless devices. Of course they are now financially bound to pay these things off and if you cease to pay this ******* they simply cut off your other lines for which you have paid for decades.

I wholeheartedly believe that they should take back these "paper weights" and replace them with actual working devices, or they should take it back and allow us to stop our payments.

REGARDS

Edith Pieters

My two cellphone numbers are: *** ***