Vodacom - ***** of the highest order and nobody seems to care

<p>I had high hopes after receiving the personal cell number of the Head of Vodacom's Risk and ***** Department. After one call and three emails to her I have had no response. I have given Vodacom months to respond and have hear nothing from them. Earlier this week I sent a final email to Corné Fourie expressing my frustration and threatened that if I didn't receive a response withing 48 hours I would be forced to turn to social media and Hello Peter. This is my story, this is what I sent to Vodacom on 29 May, 8 June and 10 July to which I have yet to receive a response.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p>On the afternoon of 16 May 2017 my mobile stopped working, No Service.</p> <p>Between 3:30pm and 8am the following morning I turned my phone off and on multiple times hoping it would reset and get service. It never did.</p> <p>At around 8:30am on 17 May I called Vodacom on 082 111. My reference for this call is ********** 95. I think I spoke to Nkuleleko.</p> <p>The agent informed me that my phone was not working because I had carried out a SIM swap, which I had not done.</p> <p>MAIN ISSUE: <br />Someone did an illicit SIM swap on my mobile number. I've found out that this was not done in a shop, but via a call centre agent. I've seen that the same agent spoke to the ********* twice. I believe to authorise a SIM swap the ********* would have had to know my ID number, banking details, address, date of debit order, etc. Of course it is alarming that someone has all these details.</p> <p>What is more disturbing though is that I never received a sms notifying/warning me that a sim swap was going to take place. Why? Nobody has been able to tell me. If I has got that sms, I would have got onto this 14 hours before I did.</p> <p>Using my phone number, the ********* moved more than 200k from my bond and credit card into my current account. I have since found out from Nedbank Forensics that the ********* had already setup a beneficiary to transfer the money too.</p> <p>If I hadn't called Vodacom when I did, if I didn't have the presence of mind to try and login to my online banking and see that I couldn't login in, if I didn't call Nedbank and get them to block the account, I was minutes away from having over R200 000 ****** from me.</p> <p>My other frustration is that all the progress I thought I'd eventually made with the call centre agent on day 1, was not followed through on. She had said she would flag the issue, flag the SIM swap, notify your department and cc me on that email. On day 2 the another agent said he could see no Flag or Block on the account and that what had happened had not been reported to your department.</p> <p>I really would appreciate your feedback regarding this case. I spent several hours in fact days getting pushed from one person to another. Please could you respond and let me know what the next step is.</p> <p>Is it possible that someone in the call centre is working with the *********. I'd like to get to the bottom of this.<br /><br /><br />I have heard from a reliable source in the tech security space that Vodacom and the banks pass this off as a random act while they are very aware that this happening. The educated opinion is that there is collusion between call centre agents within the banks and Vodacom, that share information, making this type of ***** possible. And it makes sense to me. How else could someone get all my personal details that are necessary when requesting a SIM swap? If I hadn't caught this in the nick of time, I'd be R200 000 poorer with neither Nedbank nor Vodacom feeling liable and the struggle to get my money back would be on.<br /><br />I find it staggering that nobody at Vodacom has ever contacted me over the last 8 weeks. They do not seem to care that someone within their employ is a ******** and committing *****, robbing their customers. Disgraceful!</p> <p> </p> <p>Rob de Sousa, Cape Town</p>