NEW VODACOM *****

NEW VODACOM ***** BY SENIORS WITHIN

This is the second time this is happening.

I bought R55 airtime. The airtime doesn't come through to my phone. When this happened forghe first time, I thought there must have been an error maybe I didn't buy, so I repeated buying. Still no airtime. When I called I realized that they had set up their call center in such a way that you can't reach them but a clueless bot called Tobi. Eventually I outmaneuvered the bot and talked to the agent. She began to gaslight me by saying the airtime was taken because I ""might"' have made an advance. This was false, but she said they would block my ability to do airtime advances.

Second time around, this happens again, which is today. I purchase airtime and it doesn't come through. I try to call Vodacom and the call gets redirected to this bot called Tobi again. This time they say it's because of subscriptions , they no longer say it's advances because they blocked them. This is also false but the robot is not coded to deal with such ***** at all.

This ***** seems more sophisticated than I realized. Here is why ;

If Vodacom (through it's employees) can ***** your voucher and reverse it for real cash... Most people wouldn't take legal action for R55 airtime, however that R55 airtime across Vodacom employees is billions in rands for them. So at individual level, people just let it go. Then when you call Vodacom, because they know what they have done, they profile the caller by saying you should put your phone number first before they can assist you. Then they prevent you from talking to an agent and redirect you to a bot that cannot help you because it was not coded to do so. The way that this has been organised (theft connection to call center blockage) gives me the impression that it is organized crime. If Vodacom prevents customers from calling them, we need to escalate this crime further and start considering a class action lawsuit as well.

What I have noticed is that when people bring such things to the public, Vodacom replies in the comment section by saying an agent will call. No, we should be able to call the agent, not the other way round. This organized crime and it now has to stop, the perpetrators brought to book and the company has to part with serious money.