Vodacom Shake-up summer: What a joke of a competition

On the 11th of December I played the Vodacom Shake-up summer competition on my phone using the Vodacom app. I used a "megashake", and much to my delight I won a Samsung Galaxy Active watch. Immediately I received an sms stating that a Vodacom agent will be in contact with me within 7 days in order to arrange delivery. On the 18th of December (7 days later) I called Vodacom to follow up because I know that it was during the Christmas break and I do understand that sometimes things slip through the cracks, and that is when everything went downhill.

Firstly, Vodacom, when someone calls customer care, they want to speak to an actual agent, not go through 15 minutes of selecting options, where most of the options end up with "Thank you for calling Vodacom, goodbye".

Eventually I did get through to an agent who told me to contact Digital Planet in order to follow up on delivery, which I did via email. Digital Planet asked for my order nr, and I gave the voucher code that is still displaying under my "prize history" list. Nope, they say, that is not the number, as Vodacom must give an order number.

On the 6th of January I called Vodacom again, and after repeating the same soul draining exercise of trying to connect to an agent, the person on the other line was so half asleep and promised to get it sorted, and much to my surprise, nothing was done.

I called again on the 9th, and the agent (forgot his name) was extremely helpful and logged a complaint, and that ticket nr is A2-JVSA-AVG2WP. I received numerous smss's that the ticket has been assigned to a technician. Then on Sunday the 12th, the same gentleman that called assisted me in opening called me to follow up if anyone has contacted me, and no, nobody has, then I get an sms stating that the ticket has been closed and I must send the contents of the original complaint sms (what sms?????) to Vodacom should I want to escalate.

I then called again on Tuesday 14 January and eventually spoke to a lady called Lindiwe, and after a long waiting period, she said that a lady called Immaculate deals with the Shake-up claims and she will contact me that same day to sort out the prize. Lindiwe did follow up later that day, and still no call up to the publishing of this review from anybody with help to obtain an order number to claim the watch.

Now, dear Vodacom, yes, it is a prize that was won in a competition, but if you do not want to give out prizes, then please do not run competitions and make promises or make it impossible to claim a prize. If you for any reason do not want to give me the prize, please have the ***** to say so then we can call it a day. Otherwise, I await your call.

Nick Breytenbach