Vodacom: So much worse than Telkom

The service from Vodacom Fibre is disgusting. I have always been with Vodacom as far as cellphone service provider goes but after my experience with Vodacom Fibre, that is likely to change.

The installer scheduled an appointment for installation for 1pm on a Friday so I took leave to accommodate this, however they never showed up. When trying to call back to find out what's going on. I find out the number they called from no longer exists. I then called Vodacom Customer care and was told to wait until 5pm because "they sometimes run a little late" and that the service agent would call back at 5pm to see if they had been there yet. No call received.

The next day I called customer care again and was told that someone would contact me during the course of the day - a service request was generated for this. No call received.

2 days later I called back to find out what was happening, I was told that the request has only been assigned as of a couple of hours ago and someone would contact me shortly. I was then contacted by the installer themselves who told me that the team was in the complex I stay in, but they installed the fibre in the wrong apartment... They were very sorry and they would call me that evening or the next morning. No call received.

The next day at 12h30 (today) I call customer care again. Spoke to a woman that sounded very knowledgeable and got my hopes up. She explained that the project manager in charge of my area was someone by the name of Gareth and she would make sure he contact me in the next 40 minutes. She would call in 40 minutes to make sure this happened. No call received.

I then phoned back for a final time 2h30min after this. I asked to speak to the woman who was meant to phone me back and was told that they can't transfer me, but will ask her to phone me back. At this point I of course no longer believe the "we'll contact you" line that has been fed to me by Vodacom so I said no, I want to speak to someone senior and AGAIN I was told, "I will have to mail them and ask them to call you back"

Eventually came through, but now they have given me the wrong preconfigured router and the support desk has no idea how to walk me through configuring the router they have given me. Instead they have had to send the request off to a different team to configure and I now have to wait 48 hours for them to configure it. I know for a fact that it should not take even remotely close to 48 hours, and I definitely should not have to suffer due to an issue that was caused by Vodacom/The installer.

120 Hours later and still no connection. Better yet, today my sales order has been closed and I received a mail stating my service is active. The mail contains a list of everything assigned to me and STILL the incorrect router is assigned to my account. Vodacom's service levels are utterly disgusting, and the amount of effort put in by them to get this issue resolved is shameful. I HIGHLY recommend everyone to stay away from them. Possibly the worst company in South Africa to deal with as a customer.

When your company is worse than Telkom, you should really rethink your business strategy.