Shafted by VODACOM after 20 years...

Vodacom

My partner and I have been vodacom clients for years. My partner for 20 odd years in fact and we both have had our cellphone numbers for many years which we use for both personal, but more importantly, business purposes. So those numbers are listed on business cards, websites etc etc.)

During lock down we were unable to make full payment on our monthly contracts in excess of R2500 for my partners and my own and were very relieved when vodacom contacted us and made us a repayment offer which we gladly accepted. This was that we would be given four months to catch up on our payment arrears and to assist with this we would be placed on 'pay as you go' until the end of September, at which time we would go back to normal. We were so relieved and impressed by their understanding and support during these challenging times and very relieved that we could continue to conduct our business as per usual.

The full arrears amount agreed upon was paid monthly, admittedly not always on the 1st of every month but definitely by the 10th of every month. As we were paying monthly as agreed and received no correspondence from vodacom alerting us to any issues we assumed that everything was in order and that we were going to revert to our normal contract at the end of September as agreed.

Thankfully business had started picking up and by the end of September we were ready for the full contract amount to be deducted via debit order on the 1st of the month of October. As we had topped up sufficiently on our prepaid contract and have WiFi at home, from which we both work, we did not notice anything amiss except for trying to make a call and getting an error message which we assumed was a network glitch and gave it no more thought. Until our kids informed us that they were trying to call and kept getting a message to say that our numbers do not exist. My partner is an advocate and he has had his number since 2008 so his clients were getting the same message. So he called vodacom customer care, from someone else's phone, who informed him that both numbers had been discontinued and that he had to contact the legal department. You can imagine that we were pretty confused and worried at this stage as the only lines of communication open were via WhatsApp. I was with him when he made the call , and knowing that all calls are recorded may now prove useful, because the treatment and rudeness and the threats that were made by the legal department agent was absolutely shocking. She was rude from the beginning of the call and informed us that because the arrears amounts over that four month period were not paid on the 1st of every month, we were in breach of the agreement, and our numbers discontinued and our contracts ended. What. A. Shock. He asked her why nobody had contacted him, firstly with regards to the FOUR month repayment issue being late OR to inform us that during the middle of the month, on a random date, we would no longer have a contract or, more importantly, our existing cellphone numbers. Her response was that they are not obligated to contact us. Ok. So what are we supposed to do now?? Well she then said that not only do we have no contract, no numbers, but if we did not continue to pay for these non existent numbers and contracts until the end of 2021 in full, by the 1st of every month, we would be blacklisted and a summons would be issued against us. And that was that. End of chat. We asked please could we at least have the opportunity to do a Sim swap in order to keep our numbers and we were flatly refused. In a nutshell, because we made payment a few days late, regardless that it was full payment, over four months, with no communication whatsoever we have a) lost our contracts, our numbers, all the prepaid data and airtime we had on our phones, b) we have to pay the full package contract amount every month ( no adjustment will be made here regardless of the fact that only one phone still needs to be paid up and we are not using airtime or data) until the end of 2021, c) we now have two numbers each and have to pay for those also. d) I just realized that we cannot make any online payments because our 'other' numbers are, of course, not registered at the bank...

Regardless of anything that has transpired and our feelings behind the treatment we received, all we want is the opportunity to do a Sim swap and are happy to pay for the one phone but surely not for a package we are not receiving and did not terminate. And definitely not for a phone we do not owe anything on??

I shudder to think how many people are in this situation and how vodacom is coining it from discontinued contracts that they are still receiving money from.