Vodacom SA – VodacoN more like it!

I have never experienced such an infuriating level of incompetence and customer-service failure from a company as I have with Vodacom.

Vodacom signed me up for a SIM-only contract over FOUR YEARS ago. I never received the SIM. I never used it. It was never activated. In fact, Vodacom’s own records confirm that the SIM was never activated or used.

Yet somehow, I have been happily paying for this completely non-existent service for more than four years.

I discovered this over a year ago and immediately contacted Vodacom to dispute the contract and have it cancelled. What followed has been an absolutely exhausting circus of phone calls, promises, escalations and being passed from one department to another.

Despite acknowledging that the SIM was never activated or used, Vodacom apparently cannot manage to cancel a contract that should never have been billing me in the first place.

Two months ago, after exhausting every possible avenue, I finally cancelled the debit order myself because it was the only way left to stop Vodacom continuing to take money from my account for a service I never received.

And what does Vodacom do?

They send me a LETTER OF DEMAND for “outstanding payments”!

You genuinely couldn't make this up.

Nearly two weeks ago, I spent yet more hours on the phone with Vodacom, wasting my time, my cellphone credit and an extraordinary amount of energy explaining the entire saga yet again. I was promised that the matter would be “escalated” and that I would receive a callback by the following day.

Of course, nothing. No callback. No resolution. No communication.

I have repeatedly explained that I do not live or work in South Africa, making a visit to a Vodacom store impossible. Apparently, this information is also incapable of making its way through the Vodacom system.

At this point, I have completely run out of patience.

How can a telecommunications company demand payment for a SIM that they acknowledge was never activated, never used and was never even received by the customer? And how can it take more than a year to resolve something that should be incredibly straightforward?

This isn't customer service. It is an endurance test.

Vodacom has taken an extraordinary amount of my time and money trying to correct a problem of their own making, and now has the audacity to threaten me with a demand for payment.

I am also demanding reimbur*****t of every payment Vodacom received from me for this contract during the period in which no service was ever provided. If their own records confirm that the SIM was never activated or used, there is no justification for them having collected these payments from me in the first place.

I am absolutely disgusted.

Vodacom: sort this out. Cancel the contract, remove the alleged outstanding balance, reimburse the payments you took for a service that was never provided, confirm that the account is closed, and stop wasting your customers' time.

And perhaps consider changing the name from Vodacom to VodaCON — because right now, that's exactly how this entire experience feels.