Vodacom – an absolute billing and customer-service nightmare

I have never experienced such a frustrating customer-service process.

For months, I have had to repeatedly prove that I made payments to Vodacom. I have supp**** bank statements, proof of payment and proof that payments were made at Vodacom branches.

At one point, Vodacom told me they could see that a payment had been made at their own store but that the store had apparently failed to process/allocate it correctly. Instead of fixing their internal error, the amount was allowed to accumulate as “arrears” and I was expected to sort it out myself.

Then I was told my contract had actually ended in July 2025. Nobody informed me of this. Nobody contacted me to explain that I supposedly needed to cancel the contract. Instead, Vodacom continued billing me.

I was subsequently told to pay the remaining amount and then contact Vodacom to cancel. I did exactly that.

I have now received another bill claiming that I owe approximately R5,000.

For what?

My handset was already paid off. I have proof of the payments I made. Vodacom has acknowledged payment-processing issues on their side. I have spent months sending proof, calling branches and speaking to different consultants, only to receive a different explanation every time.

To make matters worse, I have paid for August but have effectively had no usable mobile service. I cannot make calls or use mobile data unless I am connected to Wi-Fi.

So Vodacom is happy to continue billing me while I have no usable service, while simultaneously claiming that payments I made were missing or incorrectly processed.

This isn’t a customer problem. This is a Vodacom problem.

I want a complete, itemised reconciliation of my account, proper allocation of every payment I made, reversal of any charges caused by Vodacom’s own processing errors, cancellation of the service if there is no valid contractual basis for continued billing, and a written explanation for how an account went from being “settled” to allegedly owing approximately R5,000.

I am escalating this matter formally and will be taking the complaint to the relevant regulatory authorities if Vodacom does not resolve it properly.

Vodacom needs to stop making customers clean up the mess created by its own systems and internal processes.