Thanks for NOTHING!

<p>Once a year you have a special day called your birthday. Please bear in mind this day comes around only once a year. Yesterday were my special day, my Birthday! The day of the year I will be receiving the most phone calls on a single day and making the least! Something to look forward to!</p> <p>I woke-up very excited about the day ahead. Put on my Birthday outfit and taking extra care with my appearance. I already received a couple of well wishes on WhatsApp with a promise of a phone call during the day. Armed with my trusted Vodacom partner (Cell phone) I left the house. Starting the day excitedly, because after all it is my Birthday! I were going to be a good day, a trusted friend already wished me well at 07h12. Wow, I thought to myself this is going to be a good day!</p> <p>Before I started the day with my first appointment, I felt obligated to apologise for the number of times my phone would be ringing through the appointment and put my phone on silent. Wondering how may birthday calls I would be missing... </p> <p>To my surprise looking at my phone after the appointment: No missed calls, No voice mails. Did my family, friends and co-workers forget about my special day? As one and all would agree that on the day of your birthday people make the effort to wish you well for the years ahead. And if you are very fortunate people will tell you that they love you and express a vote of appreciation by telling you that you add value to their lives.</p> <p> This turned out to be the pattern of my special day. No calls from family, friends and co-workers and only messages from them on WhatsApp!!!! Only at 12h42 my husband informed me on WhatsApp that he has been receiving calls from well-wishers because that they can’t get hold of me. My service provider Vodacom just said: “The subscriber you have dialled is not available at present please try again later.”</p> <p>VODACOM thanks for your non-delivery of service. Your role is to provide your customers with a stable, reliable form of communication. You have failed dismally and this had a negative impact on both my professional and private live. And yes my account is up to date and paid. There was no reason for the break in service delivery from your side.</p> <p>I received only 2 phone calls for the day!!!</p> <p>It might not seem to you as a big issue but allow me the platform to explain why it is!!!! On a professional level; I am employed at the Department of Education at one of the District Offices. One of my core responsibilities is to support schools on a daily basis with any extra-ordinary occurrence involving any of the enrolled learners at 193 schools including ****, attempted suicide etc. No school, parent, learner or co-worker could get hold of me! I just pray and hope that no learner needed my expert support.</p> <p>On a personal level; I celebrated my birthday with only 4 other people. Let me explain: On my birthday as I receive my birthday wishes I invite the well wisher over for my birthday celebration and give them the name of the restaurant where it will be. Needless to say this year it didn’t happen. Only the well wishers that phone my husband had the name of the venue. My brother travelled all the way from the Westrand as a surprise to celebrate join my birthday celebrations but arrived at dead man’s door because we already left for the restaurant and didn’t have my husband’s number on his work phone. He had to return home because yes; “The subscriber you have dialled is not available at present please try again later”.</p> <p>I reported the failure of service and it is still not fixed. To make matters worse on Wednesday 20 July 2016 my phone were ****** and I lost about a 1300 numbers. My birthday were the day I could retrieve some of the lost number as my family, friends and co-workers would have phoned me to wish me well.</p> <p> </p> <p>Vodacom, thanks for NOTHING!</p>