VODACOM _HELLO FROM THE OTHER SIDE

The first thing that is crossing my mind now as I started typing this....I was now forced to click on 1-star, but Vodacom does not even deserve 1 star.....they deserve nothing but a bad review.

Not that I even think this will get them to fix the issue....BUT, at least I can put it out there for the public to see, or to relate.

Since this has now been a 6 month journey, with an insane amount of emails and phone call, to the point where we reached to office of the CEO, we are now at the point where we just want Vodacom out of our lives, but it's like a divorce, the only way to see it through is if both parties can sign the papers, but If the one goes MIA, then you have a problem, in this case Vodacom....so let met copy and paste a few of the emails to Vodacom, and just note that this emails have been forwarded to every last person we could reach over the 6 months, this includes ICASA complaints, Vodacom Media relations, office of the CEO, customer complaints, customer care (which we now can't reach, since the mailbox is full - that actually says A LOT) as well as the National Consumer Commission.

Here goes:

EMAIL to Vodacom on 20/03/2025 – remember that inbetween that date and the start date and up until this day there has been an insane amount of emails and phone calls, which will take forever to copy and paste, but this is to try and get the picture out there.

**Hi Tyrone, trust you are well. Kindly refer to our telephone conversation earlier this afternoon. I have had the Vodacom 082 @@@ @@@@ number dating back to before the year 2000. My account includes multiple packages, phones, tablets, and watches. During this time I never missed a payment/debit order. I have been a loyal client for over 25 years. Over the last 10 years my wife got many offers from different service providers, but I always stayed loyal to Vodacom, up until now. I am disappointed beyond measure. I have been disrespected, humiliated and **** to by Vodacom. At the end of Jan 2025, I contacted Vodacom to inform them that I wanted to restructure my account due to severe burnout after 21 years at my company that had led to temporary disability. I had to explain my situation over the phone, this took a lot out of me, since I am not in a space where I have the energy to explain my situation over and over again. But due to the fact that I am the account holder, this was something I had to handle myself. Vodacom requested that I email them some documents before this could be finalized, so my wife emailed them the docs. The mail was sent to *** on 28 Jan 2025. An email with (reference removed for privacy) came back as confirmation. A consultant worked on it and downgraded my accounts. This was confirmed during our telephone conversation. After the restructuring my monthly bill was supposed to be R1900, however this would be subject to a penalty that had to be paid. The consultant explained that it was too close to the end of Jan, thus the changes would not be able to take effect for the month of Jan. When my Feb invoice was sent, I saw the penalty and the amounts I had to pay, but the total amount still seemed to be more than what I was supposed to pay. This invoice was emailed to me on 7 Feb 2025 with a total amount of R6261.02. On 7 Feb 2025, I phoned again and spoke with Olie. After explaining what was supposed to be on the account and helping her with the math, she told me that the reason that the bill was not yet correct is because I first needed to pay the penalty and that the correct amount would be charged the following month. I further told her that the overcharged amount seems to be for the watches that are on my account that should no longer reflect. Again, she told me that this is due to the penalty that needed to be paid and that it would reflect correctly the following month. She also checked on the watches as devices and said that I should not be paying for them, but I confirmed and said that I had been paying since I got them. Again, I was told this must be due to the penalty. I requested that the matter be investigated at that time to ensure that there would be no incorrect billing going forward; her reply was that I am worrying about something that was not a problem yet and that she can’t escalate my enquiry and that I had to wait for the Mar bill and that I should trust her. Reluctantly, but with no other choice I agreed. Now you have one guess what I saw when the Mar invoice was sent to me. The bill is still above R3k instead of R1968. So, a host of calls start from this point on, with a consultant that assures me that this will be escalated, and I shall receive an escalation reference number, which I never got because it was not done. The next consultant confirmed that it was never done, and then did it while I was on the line, because I said I no longer trust that the people I speak to on the phone will do what they say they will (reference removed for privacy). When I followed up on the escalation with the next consultant, I was told that it had been closed, and no notes had been made on it nor had any communication nor had the recordings been sent to me; however, this will now be sent to a manager, and I will be cc’d on the mail. Another lie. When I contacted the next consultant to follow up again I was firstly told that the mail had been sent but that the previous consultant forgot to cc me in the mail, thus I said I want to stay on the line so that the mail can be forwarded to me as I don’t believe that Vodacom people will do what they say anymore. For 30 minutes I was on hold waiting for the mail, just to be told that the consultant had changed the story yet again and now told me that the mail can’t be seen, but that I can expect a call sometime. I refused to accept this and insisted on speaking to the team leader, while after again having to hold for another 20 minutes I spoke with Tyrone Joel. While I was on the phone with Tyrone, my wife phoned Vodacom in (the town where we live) and spoke to the lady in the shop, she then told my wife that my account was indeed not downgraded, but instead there where 2 migrations and 2 upgrades done on my account, she also confirmed that there were no settlements on any devices and that we are indeed still paying all the devices, and in fact, we will now be paying more than confirmed over the phone when this was discussed. In between all this, I had to deal with me paying my account in Feb early as I changed my banking details and didn’t want to risk missing a payment, just to have the same amount be deducted a few days later. I had to phone for this also and requested feedback. The money was reversed, but again no feedback was given. Trying to deal with the various departments in the last 2 months (take note this is almost 6 months now) has been the most frustrating customer service I have ever experienced. If this was a marriage between Vodacom and myself, this is the point I file for a divorce. I want the recordings for the following calls, and I encourage you to listen to these calls at normal speed to start getting a feel for the frustration that builds up when you spend this amount of time with multiple consultants and nothing gets resolved. I don’t believe any of the lies anymore and don’t trust Vodacom as a company anymore. Herewith follows a list of some of the phone calls. Call Log outgoing: 17 Jan 2025 11:58 (20Min 39Sec) 21 Jan 2025 12:13 (1Hr 4Min 7Sec) 07 Feb 2025 11:45 (1Hr 12Min 22Sec) 28 Feb 2025 18:07 (14Min 34Sec) 10 March 2025 10:25 (31Min 2Sec) 14 March 2025 11:34 (46 Min 7Sec) 20 March 2025 09:57 (16Min 12Sec) 20 March 2025 15:15 (1Hr 18Min 59Sec) Call Log incoming: 28 Feb 2025 07:46 (1Min 28Sec) 28 Feb 2025 19:54 (5 Min 32Sec) **

08/04/2025 mail to Neville Good Afternoon Neville

Thank you for returning my call. Here is some information sent to Tyrone.

You will see in the mails below that I have requested some recordings, please add to this list:

25 March 16:48 (7Min 0Sec) 25 March 16:56 (40Min 22Sec) 25 March 19 :26 (1Hr 42Min 31Sec)

You will note that these are not all the calls, there are multiple more no answers or employees just dropping the call.

I shall send the rest of the mails shortly.

Regards**

**23/04/2025 to external party

Good evening. Kindly refer to your email dated today at 13:18. My husband received a phone call at 11:01 and the lady from Vodacom told him it was just a call to tell him they can't speak to him at that moment, due to high call volumes. In my opinion that is ridiculous because they phoned him and not the other way around. So they said they would phone back at 13:00. We did not receive that call.

I don't know what more you need.

Also what happened to Neville Moodley?? He was supposed to get back to us, but suddenly vanished into thin air, same as Tyrone Joel, after making empty promises. Neville Moodley is now ignoring our emails and also phone calls. We left messages, no luck with that even. How can a company like Vodacom handle something so simple in such a way?

Please urgently phone my husband.**

**01/05/2025 Good day, my husband did not receive any phone calls, so you are most welcome so phone him again on my cell phone 082 @@@ @@@@.

After all these months of back and forth, we get only an email with the above-mentioned information. No invoices, credit notes, or statements to confirm the actual amounts, nothing for us to see any corrections. No sorry from vodacom, no compensation to show that they value us as clients and feel the need to keep us as clients. This is just such a disappointment. Up until now we are still waiting for feedback on the last phone call from the office of the ceo..... how does a company as big as Vodacom handle this as they did.

So we need Vodacom to confirm in writing the monthly amount we will be paying as we negotiated in January 2025. We can't make a payment of R2746.76 but we have no invoices to use as reference.

I urge you to see this matter as a very important issue for us!!!!!!

I await your response so we can settle the payments and see how the future with Vodacom will look for us......since we lost All faith in Vodacom as a service provider. Is this the best Vodacom can do for a client after all these years. I am shocked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!**

**29/05/2025

Good day Rosani, kindly refer to our telephone conversation a while ago. Still no feedback on this issue.....you said that you will get the manager of Neville Moodley to contact me. No feedback up until this day. How is this happening??? I don't have words anymore.....this has become a huge embarrassment for Vodacom in my opinion.

I will await feedback, although I know I will get none.**

*12/06/2025 UNRESOLVED MATTER CELL 082 @@@ @@@@

Good day - we want to understand why we are not getting ANY feedback regarding this ongoing matter, this has now been almost 6 months, still we are receiving the same incorrect invoices, no corrections, no feedback, no explanations, nothing, only VODACOM asking for money. If the Office of the CEO, at this point, are unable to solve this matter, which has now become such a mess, then we don't know who to turn to, ICASA can't fix this, no external party can fix this, only VODACOM can fix this........why should we as customers keep on sending emails after emails after emails.

We now feel that the only way to solve this is to go to the papers, since there are papers and magazines who would love a story like this. And this will not be because we want to gain something for ourselves, since by now, we know that will not happen in any case, but it would rather be to expose the utmost incompetence of a company like VODACOM. This feels like a netball game, the one just keeps passing the ball to the next person, but other than a netball game where the end result will be to score a goal, in this case VODACOM has no idea where the GOAL circle is. So then the ball just goes back to where it began, and so the story goes........this has become a humiliating situation for VODACOM in our opinion. And frustrating for us. The part that is the most confusing, is that a telecommunication company, who delivers means to communicate, has got no idea how to communicate, not with each other, and especially not with the client. This is just unacceptable.**

This is only a glimpse of what we are dealing with ...... now I ask you, what do we do? What on earth can we do??