VODACOM poor service

I have been a Vodacom customer for nearly 25 years and have never experienced such poor service. I wonder if the CEO ever puts his call centre to the test? I doubt it. To speak to a human takes an inordinate amount of time and the call centre agents have no authority to solve a problem.

The issue: I recently upgraded my contract as it was 24 months old. On Tuesday 7th I inserted my new sim card and guess what! unable to place or received calls. Then the fun started. I got hold of the call centre who told me that the Vodacom ***** department had suspended my line. Why? They could not tell me. I stayed on the line (phoning from a landline) for 40 minutes whilst they tried to get hold of their internal ***** department. Just before 5pm I was told that the ***** department was busy and that they closed at 5pm and would only open again at 9am on Wednesday. But don't worry, we will call you back. Guess what? No call. I then went through the tedious process of working through the prompts until I spoke to an extremely helpful Zanele. She gave me the ***** department email address and phone number after having tried herself to get hold of the department. I tried unsuccessfully to make contact with the Vodacom ***** department.

Around lunch time, she called me on my landline and informed me that my phone line was activated. Guess what? Incoming calls could be received but no outgoing calls/ SMS could be made/sent. She made contact with me several times during the afternoon to see if my service had been fully restored which did not happen. She told me again that she was also unable to contact the ***** department internally.

I phoned the contact centre today (Thursday) again following the frustrating phone prompts until I eventually spoke to Nokilunga (a call centre agent). She told me that this was a technical issue and that it was escalated to the technical department and that I should wait 24-48 business hours (3-5 days) for a response. When I told her that I was unhappy that I had been without service for 2 days and requested that this issue be escalated to a higher authority, I was told this was not possible and that I must wait to hear from Vodacom. So,, I am still waiting.

This is poor service, When will my line services be fully reinstated? Why did the ***** department suspend my line? Is Vodacom going to reimburse me for the time that I was unable to use my contractual services? Lets see how long it takes for Vodacom to sort this out.