"Please return to SA to RICA your sim card sir".

My experience with Vodacom over the past few years has not been great, to say the least that is...

In the latest of convenient "misunderstandings" Vodacom has managed to deactivate my South African Vodacom number leaving me financially stranded abroad, as I am currently not in South Africa but in Hong Kong and I am not planning on returning anytime soon.

I had a contract with Vodacom which I asked to move to a prepaid number once the contract duration expires, I was assured that this will not be a problem and that I would be able to use my number as I normally do, I would just need to buy airtime.

Well, that was not the case...

The minute my contract cancelled, they subtracted my remaining airtime balance of a few thousand Rands from my account, not sure why this was done, and my sim card was immediately deactivated.

After several hours of trying to explain my situation to several call centre staff across several different departments (costing an arm and a leg to call internationally) , the best answer that Vodacom could come up with was, "Sir you need to return to South Africa to Rica your sim card."

Wow, easy as that hey?

So disregarding the fact that no one informed me that I would have to re-Rica my sim card if moving my contract to prepaid because if I knew this, I would have kept a cheap contract going until my return to SA, my sim card was in fact a prepaid RICA simcard before I made the mistake of going into a contractual agreement with *****ed Vodacom.

So now I am unable to do online banking, cannot connect my new phone to my whatsApp, log into several services, like my coronation account due to this mix up.

I really feel that I am not accountable for this and that Vodacom should immediately rectify this error and also explain the thousands of rands of airtime that disappeared and while they are at it also explain the hundreds of R5 charges for Vodacom live content???