VODACOM CHATZ MIDLANDS - poor management, poor after sales service!

I purchased a Nokia 3 on 17 April 2018 from VODACOM CHATZ in midlands mall. The phone charging was erratically. It required up to 5 hours for a full charge and then in the days following it took up to 6 hours. I took the phone back to the store within the 7 days to validate the "out-of-box" failure warranty. In the presence of a salesman, I used a store charger where the phone reflected 6 hours to full charge. The salesman booked it in as OBF on 23rd April.

OBF was rejected and the phone returned to me on the 8th of May stating "battery tested - performance normal". 10 May again the charging became erratic, this time I documented the behavior with several pictures at different times of charging. With the phone 35% charged, 5 hours remained to full charge. After Draining the battery, I tried again, this time with 11%, 3 hours to full charge. 15 minutes later - 2 hours to full charge.

After submitting all the photographic evidence to the store, they book it in but again the repair report comes back with misspelling "OBF REJECTED TESTED/ BATREY CHARGERS NORMALLY NFF" . The spelling alone worries me about the competence of the person dealing with the repair. 28 May I call the repair center as Its now obvious the manager at the branch has no idea what to do. The person I spoke to advises that at most the phone should take around 2 and a half hours to full charge.

In person the salesman witnessed the erratic charging, I submitted photographic evidence, but the store manager refuses to refund or exchange the device because the technician COULD NOT FIND THE FAULT - that is no error of mine and I should be entitled to a refund if I have provided evidence of a fault but it cannot be found.

The after sales service has been horrifying as I was left with no alternative but to take back the faulty phone as the manager could not make an executive decision to exchange the phone for a working unit. The second time around I have not collected the phone and will take this up with the consumer commission.

A truly poor reflection of the state of customer service from the Vodacom brand.