Red Contract Horror - No Phone Connection,No data for business critical device

<p>On Friday 19 May (possibly a day or two earlier) I enquired about moving from a Pay as You go to a contract in order to save money. I work for myself and I was spending a fair amount of money of airtime and data.</p> <p>The Red Package that the consultant (Preston) offered me sounded good, especially considering he highlighted that a spend cut off could be put in place to ensure that if I reached the maximum data/call limit that an automatic block could be put in place. I had indicated that I had had a very bad experience with Vodacom before where I had hit R8000 one month in data charges for no clear reason - as I result I highlighted that I would only consider this package (R1600 pm) if there was a guarantee that the risk to me would be limited. This was assured.</p> <p>I signed up the paperwork and he assured me that everything was in order and that I'd receive an activation SMS once it was live. I then asked what would happen to the current data/airtime balance on my phone (approximately R800) and he indicated that it would be lost once the contract was activated. At that point I indicated that if this was the case I'd cancel the contract and rather re-visit this process once the data and airtime had been used.</p> <p>Preston offered an alternative solution - he said I could use the rest of the day to resolve the airtime and data and if possible I could transfer airtime to someone else. He then showed me how to do this. He also advised me that he could delay activation and give me a call the following day to confirm if the activation could go ahead. We agreed this sounded best. Before I left Preston also had a pay-as-you-go sim put into my old phone for my son.</p> <p>Two days later (not one as promised) I received an activation SMS on my old phone with the new pay-as-you-go sim. My new contract phone stopped working for a few hours and then progressively I could get calls and SMS’s then make them. I didn't receive a call from Preston until much later that day (2 days without data/WhatsApp). When I told him I was concerned that the pay-as-you go account was active but that my new contract didn't seem to be working he asked if I had reset the phone and advised that it might take another 30min for everything to come right, worse case "first thing in the morning” everything would be fine. He assured me that although the data not going live wasn’t completely usual that it wasn’t a problem. I was not convinced and told him so. I was also concerned that the contract had been moved to the new sim but he assured me this was not the case. To me something was very wrong. By the end of the day I could call and SMS from the "contract account", but no activation SMS had come through and I still had no data at all. I was still convinced that the contract had not been activated and that the limited use of the phone was the remained airtime I had purchased in play. He again said “wait to the morning” and I flagged that this was impacting my ability to work.</p> <p>The next day I still had no data access at all and this was causing me severe problems with my clients. My livelihood depends on these clients and the radio silence was now quite unacceptable. I went back into the V&A store to check what was going on and a man called Chad told me there was evidently an error on their system, that Preston was not in, that he (chad) couldn't do anything about the “system problem" but that Preston would have to call me back to sort it out. I had gone all the way into the store to sort this out and he simply said he can't help me, he didn’t even try. He dismissed it as a "system problem" and he accepted that ultimately Vodacom seemed to be a fault but he couldn't fix it. Luckily I recorded all the conversations as proof of this unreal experience. I also had a friend with who witnessed this - it was simply unreal.</p> <p>I had signed up to a R1600 premium cellphone service account to make my life easier and I was now at least 3/4 days into the contract without having had any decent level of customer service and without a functional phone or account. As I indicated to Chad if this was not resolved I wanted to cancel the contract. He said Preston would resolve this as an urgent matter the next morning and that cancelling the contract was not necessary. Preston called 2 days later. He was unable to resolve the problem and again suggested restarting the phone. Nothing was resolved.</p> <p>By Wednesday 24 May I had been without functional internet for a week and my work was severely suffering (I have documentation highlighting how much damage was done). I spent 45 minutes on the phone with customer services, being bounced around to 4 different people. Eventually someone fixed the internet situation and I was able to access WhatsApp - but I had no idea why I had not had data access for a week despite having call and SMS access. I again asked for confirmation on my contract (no activation SMS had yet been received) and that the conditions were as aI had repeatedly been assured they were, the R100 cap on my data or call spend. I asked for an email confirmation of this - nothing was sent.</p> <p>By Friday my internet stopped working again. I went into the V&A store over the weekend to understand what was going on, to get confirmation of the R100 cap and to cancel the contract if necessary. The assistant could not help me, showed me an invoice that he said (and again I have the conversation on record and again I have a very reputable witness) was wrong, said he did not know what was happening with my data and also could not confirm if the cap had been put in place. He also made me aware that I should have got a copy of the contract - I had not and had asked for the paperwork to be emailed to me, regardless. This has not happened. He advised me to email you - due to my busy work schedule this is the first opportunity I have had to do so. My work situation has been even more stressful considering the additional pressure resulting from me now having no cell phone accessibility at all.</p> <p>Yesterday my account was suspended. I have no access to SMS, calls or Data. Again I do not know why. I had very limited phone calls - the longest call to Vodacom, I hardly send any text messages and I had data access for two days before it stopped working. This has been re.</p> <p>I want to cancel this contract immediately and move back to pay as you go.</p>