Vodacom bad laptop deal and misrepresentation

Hello Peter Vodacom / HomeMark

I have to resort to reporting my bad experience with Vodacom (and their sales agent HomeMark) because I have not received a satisfactory solution to my rather simple request, and this situation has been dragging on for weeks.

Towards the end of October, a HomeMark agent called me offering me “The latest HP Laptop” (confirmed on voice recordings) with a modem and a 3Gig monthly data allocation for R289/month, which I accepted and entered into a 36 month contract with Vodacom. (Total contract value around R10,400)

When I unpacked the laptop and switched on the modem (and unknown to me at the time) automatic Windows 10 updates started running in the background. When I tried to download other software I needed, the allocated 3Gig of data had already been used up, in less than an hour.

Why? Because the software was installed in August of 2018 and the Windows (and other) updates were now so far out of date that 3Gig wasn’t enough to even to complete them.

So are Vodacom / HomeMark offering old excess stock just to move it? Then misrepresenting themselves by calling it “The latest HP Laptop”?

Because then I noticed that this “The latest HP Laptop” only had a 60Gig hard drive, 20Gig of which had already been used by the operating system and other pre-loaded internal software – all for the incredible discount bargain ba*****t price of only – wait for it – TEN THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED RAND!

So I called Vodacom. Over the next few weeks I spoke to Sales, After-sales, Data Division, Cancellations and HomeMark on several occasions, with my simple request being that someone HEAR and escalate my request for what they said I’d get (“The latest HP Laptop”) – and, to data, absolutely NOTHING.

During the most recent call, sometime last week, I was assured that my request would be escalated and someone would call me back. Now it’s Tuesday this week, so I decided to call and follow up.

Guess what I got?

Something like: “Sorry, we are unable to assist you at this time because you have exceeded your monthly allocation for access to our call centre.”

Gee thanks Vodacom – now I can’t even cancel my contract – or stop my debit order either, or you’ll black-list me.

So please help me Hello Peter and ask Vodacom very nicely to sort this out. They don’t need this kind of negative publicity.

Thank you very much, Eugene Truter