Vodacom - Another complain but who cares, definitely not Vodacom loosing another customer

Hi there Vodacom

I wish I could write on here what brilliant and good company you are, unfortunately it is the opposite. I'm a 15 year customer and while we had our difficulties over the years, it now has come to a point where you customer service and solutions are anything but acceptable, which is very mildly formulated. But lets start at the beginning of my journey with you which is leading to this complain.

End of April, my double data function was deleted for my 2 data lines and decided to cancel my contracts and start shopping around. Around mid May, I called in to cancel my 2 data lines, as one of your competitiors is currently offering really good data packages. Your contract retention department, made me an offer on a 10 gig upgrade and a 20 gig upgrade which was acceptable to me price wise. I still asked if i can go to the closest shop and collect the items there and was told, no i have to wait for delivery. Both upgrades came with a little router and sim cards. Some days later, my wife received her delivery first and noticed that there was no sim card in the parcel. My package came a day later to my work address and also had no sim card. I called your upgrade department on the same day, enquiring about the missing sim cards and was told that you don't have any (?!!!) and i should go and buy the sim cards at the closest Vodacom shop. I informed you call centre agent, that this would be a 120 km round trip for my wife, as we live in a very secluded area and that it would not be acceptable to me, whereby I work closer to a metropolitan area. The agent then said she will log an escalation and have the sim cards sent. A week later I still haven't heard anything from Vodacom and called again and guess what, there was no log that sim cards had been ordered and was told we need to go and buy sim cards for a sim swap. I told the agent again, that this is not acceptable to my wife and they will need to send them, as it was part of the deal and I asked in the beginning if I can go and collect the items at the closest shop and was told that i can't and wanted to know what has changed. I then was told that the warehouse has to send routers and sim cards separately(??????) which makes no sense cost wise. So the lady finally agreed ordering sim cards after making me feel that she does me a huge favour doing so. On Monday the 28th of May I called again wanting to know where the sim cards are and was told that the issue has been escalted and they will be coming in the next 2 days. Well nothing happened and I decided I will go and do a SIM swap at the local Vodacom shop, which I did and paid. When I returned to my office, I called Vodacom Customer Care to find out how I will get the promised refund on the Sim Card which took 45 minutes without having any luck. During this time the call centre agent asked me for the contact number of the shop ì purchased the Sim Card from which I gave him and told him to ensure that he won't cancel the sim swap. While he transferred me to the After Sales department I received an SMS, saying that the Sim swap was cancelled. When I finally got somebody on the line after hanging in the wait loop for around 15 min and asked about the refund, the lady very rudely told me that it is not possible. I explained to her that the Upgrade Department told me I should go and purchase a Sim card, she just transferred me to them without any warning. I spoke with the upgrade department and they told me I need to speak with After Sales, I tried to explain the person that I was just being transferred from them to here, as they have no information plus my sim swap had just been cancelled and guess what, I was transferred back to After Sales again. I spoke with a different person there again trying to explain what is going on and was transferred back to Upgrades again, where I told them enough is enough and I want to cancel my upgrades and my contracts (both data lines been running month to month for over 24 months at this stage) and was told I should call the cancellation department on Monday as they will work out my early cancellation fee. New upgrade running for 1 day at this stage and I told them there will be no way I'm paying a cent as this upgrades just kicked in and Vodacom has not been able to delivery what was agreed on from the start. This process took 1.5 hours and 5 x certifying my account. So I hung up, called the shop to try to find out why my sim swap was cancelled. The lady I dealt with there was Zanele from the Bronkhorstpruit Shop who informed me that somebody from Vodacom called her and told her to cancel my Sim swap. I asked her who it was and she couldn't give me a name, I'm sure your system must tell you who logged in and cancelled the request. I told Zanele to activate the sim swap again but didn't receive any SMS that it had been done. I called Zanele again and she told me she forgot or was busy and that Vodacom HO cancelled the sim swap. I informed her that I want the sim swap and she needs to activate it again, which she finally did. I meanwhile I got in contact with your Social Media Manager Buzwe who tired to assist and left it that this issue will be resolved by Saturday and he will get in contact with the other departments to see what was going on regarding missing sim cards. Still on the 1st at 20.45 i called the customer care call centre to find out why my sim swap still wasn't done, after the SMS said it will be completed at 15.25 and was told to switch off my device and wait 4 hours, I informed the lady that I'm waiting since 11 this morning and she said well it will happen. On Saturday the 2nd the sim swap was still not done by 10.00 and I called the shop again, spoke with Zanele who now tells me i need to wait 24 hours due to the cancellation. I told her that this is not really acceptable and she needs to sort this out. At this point she had put her phone down dealing with somebody else, ignoring me completely. I spoke with Buzwe again, who tried to solve the issue and i could hear that he felt very embarrassed on how this situation is playing out. However i appreciated his honesty and willingness to solve this issue. He restarted the process and asked if i can hold on for another 24 hours and he will contact me on Monday to check if the sim swap worked. When Buzwe contacted me on Monday the 3rd of June, the sim swap was still not completed and he started the process again. While trying to submit, he got an error message saying the sim card is not compatible (???). He finally got it going and called me back a few hours later to find out if it worked which it still didn't and escalated the issue to your Solutions Department. Today I got a number of SMS's telling me that the sim swap had been cancelled, then activated and activated again and escalated again. After sending a few messages, Lance called me telling me that my issue had been send to the technicians. I told him that this is totally unacceptable, as I have been waiting for this issue alone since Friday and that I want to cancel my upgrades and contracts. Lance told me that this is fine but I will have to pay cancellation fees to which I rep**** that Vodacom has to oblige to Consumer Protection Act, as well as failed to provide any kind of service or solution regarding all above matters. I finally got a call from the cancellation department cancelling both upgrades and data lines, which is purely due to the fact how 99% of Vodacom employees have been dealing with my issue since mid May. The attitude shows that Vodacom does not give a cent about their long standing customers as it has enough customers to keep the machine rolling. I know that I'm not the only person who is fed up with this appalling service of this company and how we as customers are being treated. I counted in 1 hour over 100 complains about Vodacom customer service on Friday alone, all relating to poor service delivery and ignoring clients.

I managed to cancel my upgrades and contracts with no question asked why and know that I will get the normal reply on this post if any from Vodacom

"We are sorry for inconvenience caused, Blah blah blah................"

Well, I will have no issue telling people how bad this company is and thanks god, I spend most of my time outside of SA where I have a great choice of other service providers, who offer better service and offering than Vodacom and when back at home, i have a choice as well.