Vodacom don't care

My wife went for a mobile upgrade at Vodacom Tygervalley Centre in March 2018. She upgraded her contract with a new LG Q6.

Since the upgrade she was not able to use this device and remained on her previous LG ?? with the new contract.

The problem is that the LG Q6 regularly lost mobile connection with a note saying, “Emergency Calls Only”. Vodacom Tygervalley Centre took in the unit for inspection for several times and they have also forwarded it to a Vodacom Repair Centre. Every time we were informed that the Q6 is now fixed or that there is nothing wrong with the unit. After the first return and upon re-appearance of the same problem of lost connection, I have decided to do a sim swop to make sure that it is not possibly the old sim card that was cut to fit into the Q6. But this did not work, and still on average once a day the phone refused with the message “Emergency Calls Only”. The only way to fix the error is to restart the Q6.

It is important to note that neither my wife’s old LG ?? (on Vodacom contract) nor my S7 (also on Vodacom contract) ever had this problem, so we were really confused and upset by this. We then decided to buy a new Vodacom pay-as-you-go sim for the problematic Q6. However, we still had the same issue and was then convinced that there had to be a fault with this Q6. The phone was sent in once again and was with Vodacom for some time. We wanted Vodacom to resolve the problem and would not accept it back if they cannot tell us what the next steps would be should the problem still be there. During this time, we got dragged into Vodacom in-house arguments where the one party would blame the other, one saying there is something wrong with the Q6 unit and the other that it is a Vodacom problem.

We have given up on this stalemate situation and collected the unit. I then bought my wife a new Sony Xperia XA1. This phone works 100%, no “Emergency Calls Only” errors. We then got a new Cell-C pay-as-you-go sim for the Q6. And what we have found was quite shocking !!. With the Cell-C sim in the problematic Q6 we have not in two weeks encountered the “Emergency Calls Only”, not once.

The bottom line is that this it appears that the Q6 does not work properly on the Vodacom network in the Durbanville & Bellville areas. This Vodacom did not tell us. I believe that they know about it, but they will not admit it and did absolutely nothing about it to assist us. To me this is terrible & dishonest service !!

Apart from the above, I have also had to in January 2018 engage with Vodacom regarding VERY bad mobile reception in my office. I have been in the same location in the office since 2007. This problem eventually was resolved when Vodacom installed a signal booster in our office in February 2018.

In closure, I have the same mobile number and is with Vodacom since the Cellular era commenced. Sad to say, I now believe that Vodacom is having huge issues with network coverage in the Durbanville & Bellville areas.

I am due for a mobile upgrade in January 2019 and is strongly considering moving to another service provider because of the above. I am upset that it appears to me that Vodacom is dishonest about reception and network issues and it appears that they simply don’t care !!