Vodacom

Recently I have had one of the worst experiences with Vodacom that I have ever had with any company in my life.

My father in law passed away in January due to covid, leaving behind a business with various cell phone contracts in the buseniss's name. Since he was the sole owner of the business, the business will no longer be operating making these cell phone contracts redundant. Almost all of these contracts are sim only contracts which means that there are no devices attached to the contracts and therefore cancelling these contracts should not be a big issue since Vodacom doesnt have any funds from a device to recover.

In order to ensure that the users of these contracts would still be able to use their numbers and still be Vodacom clients, I tried to convert these contracts to prepaid, since none of the employees were in a financial position to take over their contracts in their personal capacity.

Converting these contracts became a nightmare. First of all no one at Vodacom knew how to handle my situation, and to be honest I do not think that this is such a unique case. I was sent from one department to the next, with each iteration taking about a week just to get an awnser back from them. In the end I was sent back to the department where I started and eventually I ended up in a loop where each department just passes me on to the next department in order to avoid dealing with my situation.

Giving Vodacom a bad rating after a logged call also does not seam to help since I was phoned twice by customer care to find out what the issue was. After explaining my situation to customer care I still did not manage to get any service from Vodacom and it seems like nothing was done from Vodacoms side to improve their service, which makes me think why they even waste your time with the rating after a phone call if nothing happens with it.

In the end I at least managed to get a cancellation quote for converting the contracts to prepaid, after about a month and a half of continiously calling and sending mails, only to find out that the cancelation penalty is almost the same as just paying for the contracts for the remainder of its duration.

Vodacom managed to make a bad experience, loosing a loved one, even worse and I honestly think that there should be special circumstances for when an owner of a contract passess away, rather than forcing the family members to take over the contracts that they cannot even afford.

I will certainly not be doing business with Vodacom ever again.