VODACOM IS CHARGING MY WIFE NON-EXISTING FIGURES

My wife has an account with Vodacom. She bought two phones for our children there. A few months ago, she left her bank and joined Capitec. As a result, all her debit accounts were carried over to Capitec. However, Vodacom ignored the change and refused to charge my wife’s Capitec account. A few months had passed before we noticed that Vodacom was not collecting their monthly debit order.

I went personally to a Vodacom shop in Dihlabeng mall, Bethlehem and made payment and informed them to reinstate the monthly debit order. The following month, the debit still did not happen. We opted to make manual payments at the ATM. This option proved impossible as the account’s reference number was rejected by the ATM. I called the mall to give me an idea on how to make the payment at the ATM. They advised me that the figure I thought was ‘1’ was actually an ‘i’. Even after that correction, the ATM continued to reject the reference number, rendering payment unsuccessful.

Vodacom still continued to refuse to honour the Capitec debit order. At last, we finally got them to give us direction on how to pay. Just as payment resumed, a debt collection company, MBD, began calling my wife. She told them that she’s already paying the account directly to Vodacom. But they would call her 3 times at work and 3 times at home every day. They called 7 days a week. Although we kept telling them that payment is being made directly to Vodacom, they would not relent.

The account got paid up in April of 2025. In May of 2025 Vodacom suddenly went to the same Capitec account they had refused to debit all this time and took R1095.67. My wife quickly called Capitec to have the amount reversed. Capitec claimed that the amount could not be reversed because it was a different type of debit order, that could not be reversed. She explained to them that she had no such arrangements with Vodacom, it was a totally unauthorized withdrawal. Still, Capitec said they were powerless in resolving the matter.

She called Vodacom to find out why they went to her account without her authorization and withdrew an amount of money that was more than two times what used to be her debit order amount. They claimed that before they took the money, they sent a message to my son’s phone instead of my wife’s. Where did they get my wife’s Capitec account detail? They dug it up from the debit order request sent to them many months ago which they had rejected. Now that the amount is paid up, they suddenly remembered it, altered two things in the debit order: 1. Debit order type 2. Amount

When we opened the statement to check how they arrived at the R1095.67 figure, we noticed that they had reinstated a wifi router account that was paid up 3 years ago. They had also reinstated debit order on my daughter’s phone which had been paid up a few months earlier.

When my wife asked them why they are charging for a router we don’t have and phone which they did not deliver and for which there were no renewal of contract, the call-center agent said that Vodacom reserved the right to punish its customers who skipped a payment. The agent said they would continue to make those unauthorized charges until January 2026.