Vodacom - deteriorating customer service

I have encountered a very notable increase from friends and associates about the poor customer service they routinely experience at Vodacom. Sales assistants and associates are increasingly described as unhelpful and sullen.

We have noticed the slump in the Vodacom share price and wonder if the company is losing market share ?

My line was suspended (soft locked) because I apparently reached a credit limit that I was not aware of.

Firstly, Vodacom should warn someone before reaching the limit ?

Secondly , I wasn’t even able to call Vodacom customer care from my mobile after the service was suspended. Is this not dangerous , what if this happens at night and you don’t have landline or worse on the road somewhere ?

So the next morning I went to my nearest Vodacom branch ( the Kenilworth branch in Cape Town ) to try and sort this out …..

They said I needed to send in a letter ( on the letterhead of our company) to raise or remove the credit limit. They said they would email me the template for the letter and the appropriate contact address.

I never received any email. I also subsequently found out that this was actually not necessary. They could have called the customer acquisition department right there in the store on my behalf. This speaks to poor training and/or poor motivation/engagement.

I then returned to my office and tried to resolve the matter telephonically. After about 30mins of going round in circles and being shifted from one department to another , I was finally told that I could only Call customer care and ask them to log a service request with the customer acquisitions department ( the relevant department that would be able to address the issue), which I was not able to contact myself directly). They would contact me to resolve the issue but that it could take up to 48 hours !!! … So Vodacom is quite happy for a postpaid customer whose monthly bill averages around R2000 per month to wait for 2 days to have their line reactivated.

I’m sorry this is just not good enough. When our current package expires we are going to move our account to MTN or Cell C. The experience may not be better than our experience with Vodacom this year but it has reached the point where I am willing to try.