Vodacom - a big NO

Please be very careful when opening a contract with Vodacom. I opened a third contract for my younger son at the Vodacom branch in North Gate in July 2016. I was told that by choosing a uChoose 350 account that he would not be able to exceed the monthly free minutes, thus I would not get any nasty surprises or excessive call charges. (Should he exceed his quota - he could buy extra airtime and recharge his account in a similar fashion to pre-paid customers.)

Mistake 1: Instead of adding this account to my existing profile (containing my cell and my older sons cell) they effected a new profile. Without realising it I now had to separate debit orders and two separate profiles.

Mistake 2: They captured the wrong account details on the profile. My ID was blank (incorrect - even though a copy of my ID was provided), my address was 3 JHB 2001 (incorrect - even though proof of residence was provided), my e-mail address was incorrect, and a passport number was captured in error (this later turned out to be the account number of my original profile.)

Mistake 3: I could not get my profiles merged as I could not answer the (incorrectly captured) security questions.

Mistake 4: My son was able to add extra data and airtime from his phone to this account, and I was powerless to stop him. I complained monthly for over a year - not once did Vodacom assist me to stop my son abusing this account.

Mistake 5: I signed a premature cancellation on the 6th of June requesting that Vodacom cancel the contract on the expiry date of the 16th of July 2018, and move my son over to a pre-paid contract. (Today I was told that I'm getting billed for a full month and not pro-rata as quoted.)

So please - whatever you do- don't trust Vodacom. Learn from my mistake. Rather sign up with Afrihost. They offer month to month contracts - at a fraction of the price, and they are a pleasure to deal with.