Vodacom making changes on terms and conditions to get the most money from their Clients

I am currently a Vodacom customer with 4 contracts. I lost 3 of my simcards and only noticed this month when logging into my Vodacom account that they were only accumulating 2 months airtime when not being used and not 3 months as they usually did.

I contacted the call centre and spoke to Patrick Zameni ( A Supervisor at Vodacom). He advised me that their terms and conditions changed and that my airtime will now only be on the account for 2 months and not 3. He could not refer me to the clause in their Terms and Conditions.

Should there not be a law that forces Service Providers to keep their terms and conditions the same throughout a contract. You sign a 24 month agreement and on the terms as specified. They then add on their contract that you accept the future terms and conditions. Terms and Conditions should form part of your agreement and should not be changed during this time. I myself have tried to cancel my contracts now with Vodacom. You are not able to cancel the contract because Vodacom charges 75% cancellation penalty. They base this on the Consumer Protection Act that allows Service Providers to charge a reasonable amount of the outstanding term upon early cancellation. Vodacom believes that 75% is reasonable.

I feel that in todays economy this is unreasonable and Service Providers should not be allowed to have airtime and data cancelled as they please by making changes to their Terms and Conditions that they then say form part of their contract. After all the Client does pay for this and are forced to stay in the contract due to the heavy charges should they decide to cancel.

When will the Service Providers be taken on about the changes they make without proper notification and acceptance thereof.

I look forward to hearing from you.