Vodacom FTTH - worse than Home Affairs!

Without a doubt the worst customer service experience I have ever had.. and that's including Home Affairs!

In 3 months with Vodacom fibre I have been without internet on 3 occasions - first for more than 10 days, then for 4 days, and now 7 days and counting. In that time I have made in excess of 50 phone calls to Vodacom and spoken to at least 50 different agents. I have escalated to more than 10 team-leaders (I have most of their names). In all that time, only 2 people have called me back after promising to do so, and even those 2 unicorns weren't able to solve my problems. Is it that Vodacom only employs dishonest, uncaring people at the call centre?

I don't think that it the case... the people I speak to are mostly friendly and seem able to perform their tasks. The issue must be the organisation itself, and this is where it starts to make sense. Let's look at the evidence: Is a customer able to escalate an issue (for example to a specialist customer service area, or a retentions area)? No. Is a customer given turnaround time commitments? No. Is a customer promised timely feedback? No. Is a customer able to contact someone with knowledge of their issue? No.

In other words, Vodacom simply does nothing about looking after their existing customers. And why would they? Since I'm a Vodacom mobile customer too - if my fibre data is not working I use more mobile data... so after 6 days of no home internet, adding insult to injury, I run out of mobile data.. and then Vodacom start their ******ionate sales of add-on data (1Gb for 7 days for R99, anybody?)! But I have no choice - I need to buy that from them too!

So why don't I just leave? Because the entire FTTH industry in South Africa is broken as far as I can tell.. in order to sign up with a new ISP I would first have to cancel and be removed from the Vodacom service, before starting the process with another ISP. I would dearly like never to deal with Vodacom again - but that means weeks and more weeks without home internet. This impacts working from home. It impacts my business, it impacts security.. it's simply too complicated. And so I continue, in the vain hope that the next call centre agent I speak to may actually manage to resolve my issue.

Until next month!