Sim swop *****

After buying my dad a new phone yesterday, we popped into Vodacom NN Mall, to do a sim swop, since he still had the old, big sim card which we couldn't use. The lady happily assisted us and assured us that within 4hours the phone would be on and working. However, when we switched the phone on later in the day, it registered a different, new number and threw out a message saying we should call 136 if we wished to keep the old number. This was strange since we had already done a sim swop.. We called 136 however, and registered another sim swop request. By 2pm today, the phone still wasn't working. We then went to Vodacom Chatz at Amajuba mall. They quickly brought up the old number profile, which clearly showed that my dad's old number had been allocated to a completely different sim card, was registered in another phone, and it had been used in the meantime. Meanwhile, the new sim card which was in the phone, had been Rica'd, but the number wasn't even in use, so the phone was literally "useless". We had to pay for a second sim swop, and now waiting another 4hrs, which makes this an almost 2day process, simply to buy and register a new (cash) phone and (prepaid) sim card! This is pure *****, identity theft (as the old number was still linked to my dad's ID number!), ******* (as they use as much available airtime as possible in the time it takes you to figure this out), and just plain *********? Apparently we are only one of a number of people having been caught this way, by the same store... I would think Vodacom needs to make a serious case out of these type of incidents, and fire some staff members! ?