No network service for 8+ days (no voice or data) after upgrade

After incessant badgering by the call centre sales team my wife eventually relented and upgraded her contract last month which became effective from 1 Apr. Since that date she has had no service which means that as of today she has gone 8 days without the use of her phone. I have personally been on the phone 2-3 times per day to the call entre agents to try and get this resolved.

Initially the problem was a credit issue and the account was blocked due to exceeding the credit limit which came about because Vodacom did not cancel her existing contract when they activated the upgrade so she ended up with 2 contracts on the same number. When this was discovered they were initially unable to assist as the 2 Apr is a public holiday and the back office was not available. We eventually got around this problem with a temporary lift of the credit limit until after the public holidays. The phone then worked for about an hour but voice only and no data. So back to the call centre to get assistance the following day.

After numerous calls they managed to get the data to work but this only lasted for 90 mins where after we were back to no signal. Since then Vodacom has not managed to get the phone to get a signal. We confirmed that it was not the handset as I put the SIM into my identical iPhone and was also not able to obtain a signal even forcing the carrier to Vodacom. We were then advised to go to a Vodacom store and get a SIM swap as the SIM could be damaged. I still do not know how that could be the cause as it worked up until Vodacom did the upgrade. However, in desperation we drove 30 mins to the nearest Vodacom store as we were on holiday. We stood in a queue for 90 mins only to be told by the agent that they could not assist us as there was still an open order on the number. This is after we were told to please go and get a new SIM card.

I have spoken to a back office supervisor who promised that she would help get this resolved as this had been escalated every day for the past 5 days but she never came back to me and as of this afternoon the order is still open. I was advised today that it has been assigned to a technician so it should be looked at in the next 24 hours.

There is obviously no urgency in getting this resolved or retaining my wife as a customer.