Vodacom FTTH Fiber is the WORST!!!

It was with great excitement that I signed up for fiber to the home (FTTH) in May 2019. As you might know, FTTH has uncapped data as opposed to 4G / LTE which has a fixed amount of data available. FTTH is also a fixed amount that you pay per month. This, and only this, was the reason for signing up for FTTH with Vodacom.

The sales call center was very efficient in completing their tasks and promised that the FTTH installation will take less than a month from signing up. While waiting for FTTH, they gave me an interim LTE solution in the form of a cheap, low-spec Huawei router, a ****le and 100Gigs of data. They said they will not charge for the fiber until such time as its active, but only a fixed amount for the interim LTE solution. If, in the highly unlikely event that the 100G runs out, I can always "top-up" the data, which, according to the efficient sales person, does not cost that much. Great right? Well, it turned out that a 100G (which I have no way of monitoring) lasts approx. a week. But that was still OK as my FTTH is only a month away.

Wrong. Since May till today, 2 November 2019, I still do not have FTTH and have spent a small fortune on LTE data.

The infrastructure provider is Frog Foot. They came to install the fiber on the 8th of October 2019 and said that I must phone Vodacom to assist me to move over to fiber. Which I did on the 8th of October. I had to remove the ****le and plug in the ethernet cable into the router and the ONT (the Frog Foot fiber box they installed) and everything should work. Wrong again. And that is when the frustration started.

Since the 8th of October I have phoned every day (and sometimes more than once) to get help. Every time you speak to an agent who says that they will escalate and send an email to the relevant department. They never get back to you. You always have to phone. And its the same standard answer every time: we will escalate.

I have been polite, I have shouted, I have cried, nothing works with these people. Nothing. After a few weeks, a technician contacted me to come and do a site visit to see if it could be sorted out. He arrived on the 18th of October at 09:00 and just as he wanted to start, Eskom stepped in with their load shedding. He then came back on the Saturday 19 October and after a number of calls to someone ( I have the names) at Vodacom, he got it working. I was so happy. Now we will have uncapped data and pay a fixed price per month. My happiness unfortunately lasted less than 48 hours as on the Monday it stopped working.

Again the phone calls started to Vodacom and again the frustration. They will escalate etc. Same nonsense as before.

I have all the relevant SR numbers and Vodacom claims they keep track of and record all calls; thus there should be a clear record of this issue.

I have in the meantime made contact with another person who actually works for Vodacom and this person advised me to run as far as I can from Vodacom FTTH.

The great technician who was there that Saturday is also at wits end, as even he is not being helped by Vodacom ( and he works for them!).

So here is my take on this: Vodacom FTTH wants you to sign up with them so that they can milk you with the LTE interim data. Frog Foot will not talk to me as I am not their customer, Vodacom is their customer. It is not in Vodacom's interest to actually provide FTTH, as they make so much more on the LTE. Vodacom has a highly efficient sales team selling the FTTH as they are incentivized on each sale ( R250 per customer and if you can imagine how many people are caught each day; well you do the math). The technical support, billing department etc are all one and the same call center (dial ***, opt3 opt 3 for technical; press any other number and you still end up with the same people) This department have paid employees who are apathetic to the customer's plight. As a customer you also cannot speak to any other person; there is no team leader, manager, technical person that you as the client can speak to. Vodacom thus makes it impossible for the customer to speak to anyone, other than the people who have been trained to answer: "I will escalate"

I am now going to cancel Vodacom. I have been more than reasonable ( I have been waiting since May after all). I have signed up for FTTH. I have NOT signed up for LTE. Vodacom is not performing in terms of the sales agreement. In fact, in my opinion, they are acting **********ly by promising FTTH when their actual intentions are to maximize their LTE data sales.

My advice to any potential Vodacom FTTH customer is don't go there. The frustration is just not worth it.

And lastly, lets see what Vodacom answers. If they even do answer, it will most probably be a standardized answer. And nothing will happen.