Signed up for capped data contract and ended up being charged for data usage above what I signed up for ... because consultant got it wrong!!

On the 5th of September 2017 I went into Vodacom at Blue Route Mall to solve our ongoing problem of receiving exorbitant data bills from Vodacom. We were on a data contract where we paid a monthly amount and anything above that amount was being charged at out-of-bundle rates. The consultant at Vodacom in Blue Route Mall suggested that I cancel the existing contract and sign up for their Special ‘20 gigabytes Day and 20 gigabytes Night’ contract with the option to cap the data at that level and if we required additional data during the month, we could simply purchase this to top up our needs. This sounded like the perfect solution for three screen addict sons who had no concept of how much data they were using! I signed up and went home and was delighted to inform my sons that in future I would not be reprimanding them for spending so much time in front of the screens. From now on they had a finite amount of data to use in the month and once that was used up, there would be no more data. Like the pocket money concept – when the money is gone, they would have to wait until next month to get more pocket money. Finally, a solution to our problem! For the first month this worked very well. My sons used their iPads without any regard for how much data they were using and as expected the data ran out around the 20th of that month. As I was congratulating myself on this simple solution to all our woos, I received notification from my bank that R3,600 had been deducted by Vodacom from my account. Obviously, this was a mistake as I expected a bill of R299 plus VAT. I went into Vodacom at the Blue Route Mall to sort out this issue only to be informed that the contract was not capped and just kept using data after the 40GB. I spoke to the lady who had signed me up and she said that she remembered me very well and that Vodacom had ‘system issues’ at the time when I signed up and that it would be no problem and that Vodacom would refund me. I brought in my contract (because Vodacom no longer had a copy of it!), spoke to numerous Vodacom representatives, received another bill far in excess of what I had agreed to when I signed up for this data contract, finally had the contract capped and was informed that Vodacom declined to refund me the amount in excess of the R299 plus VAT which I had signed up for because I had not selected a capped data contract! The whole point of cancelling my previous data contract was to cap the data usage and now I was being informed that because this was apparently not done, I am liable for an amount far more than what I had budgeted. The Vodacom representative remembers me requesting a capped contract with a Top Up option and yet the contract apparently did not stipulate this! I signed a contract that was completed by the Vodacom representative according to my need to have a capped contract. If she made a mistake when completing this form, why am I liable for this? Before I signed, she told me that it was a capped deal and I would pay R299 plus VAT per month for this.