Vodacom really doesn’t care about customers, no reply after a month!

Vodacom continues to ignore me!

My review was published on 3 August to which I only received an automatic reply and no further correspondence since then! Vodacom really doesn’t care and loves to take advantage of its customers!

[Original Review]

Do not ever buy a phone from Vodacom or use Vodacom's repair service. Their customer service is atrocious. The whole repair situation with my iPhone 7 has been dragging on since November 2017, and it is now August 2018!

I booked in my device for an issue, and even the CEO's office didn't have the brains to make an exception to the rule and send my phone directly to Apple for service, where it would have been repaired for its issue. They refused to send it to Apple and to repair my phone, there was no ways I would pay some ridiculous figure of R7000+ for a swop out device, when I could buy one second hand for less than that.

Be that as it may, I decided to collect my phone from the shop, and to my horror, the phone was practically destroyed, in comparison to how I originally booked it in in November. I looked at the original Inspection Sheet, and it confirms there was no damage on the device at all when it was booked in. There is an "N/A" written over the inspection sheet, showing a pristine device. On the Job Card, I do concede there was a comment saying "Drop Mark". Notice that this is singular and not plural, a little mark can occur due to general handling but I guess it was so insignificant it wasn't even marked off in one spot on the Inspection Sheet.

Looking at the damage on the phone, the back cover was completely destroyed. It's like someone fired a BB gun at the whole damn thing! Every corner also had dents and marks. It was atrocious to say the least. I refused to accept the phone back in that condition, so the agent at the store said it would have to be booked in yet again, and they assured me they would mark the new Job Card with a special note so that the Advanced Repair Centre (ARC) and Store Manager would detect it and sort it out.

Guess what? That didn't happen either. Phone landed at the ARC. Either the special note was ignored or not put in, but I ended up getting yet another SMS saying I must pay that same R7000+ figure. Absolutely furious.

Emailed the ARC and they said I should have told the store manager about the situation to flag it as an exception. Which I did obviously, as you saw above, but that was not done.

I was in contact with a lady by the name of Cynthia (no surname given) from Vodacom Repairs Escalations. She first told me to "kindly escalate the matter regarding physical damages with the manager at Menlyn Repairs."

Contacted the Store Manager Leon ***an who then said the store can't do anything and has nothing to do with this situation (which is a load of BS in my opinion, point is the phone was damaged while in the custody of the Vodacom Shop, Vodacom, and Vodacom ARC, anyways...) He wasn't helpful in that sense, as a customer to his store he should have been doing everything in his power to assist me to get my phone back from Vodacom in proper condition, but he put no effort into this.

From there I emailed Cynthia SIX times to which I got ZERO replies, yes that is right folks, Vodacom started to IGNORE me! They just didn't have any answers for me when the facts and evidence in my favour was right there in their faces. They just don't care about their customers, period! An almost NINE MONTH battle. This is not what you expect when you are a customer buying an expensive device such a R13,000+ APPLE iPhone 7.

I've written this phone off, and I've written Vodacom off completely. I'm done with this terrible company. This is just such BS, honestly. Once Vodacom has your money it's clear they don't give a flying F@ck! I will tell everyone I see to NEVER use Vodacom ever.

And to the social media team seeing this: Only contact me if you're going to give me news that my phone will be given back to me in original pristine condition as per the original inspection sheet. Don't waste my mailbox space with another sob-story or excuses of why it can't be done. My supporting evidence is clear. If it can't be done, if you can't give me my phone back in it's original pristine condition, then rather not waste my time and don't send anything, just leave this review here for people to see.