Vodacom: Terrible service & exuberant cost overruns

<p>Good day,</p> <p> </p> <p>I would like to raise a formal complaint against Vodacom for poor customer service, contract administration and affiliation with clearly "questionable" parties and sites. </p> <p> </p> <p>I upgraded from my Vodacom Smart L contract to a Red Classic + along with the Samsung S7 'flat' sometime late last year. The contract cost was R1099 without the phone and R1199 including the phone.</p> <p> </p> <p>About three months after the upgrade I received an invoice of +R4000... After further enquiry, we saw that ~R1000 was due to data overrun into unbundled data, ~R1000 was due to a triple subscription to a content provider i.e. "MyCoolMobi" that I never subscribed to and would never subscribe to. This cost R10 per day, in other words they charged >R30 per day. This is clearly a questionable content provider and when we raised the issue at the Vodacom repair centre in Vanderbijlpark, Rossini drive, the kind and helpful assistant resolved our issue immediately. Thank you for that. He did however say that this is a normal occurrence and the subscription might happen through hyperlinks in photos. Why on earth does Vodacom allow these sites to operate or charge costs to their contract bill? </p> <p> </p> <p>Additionally we saw that Vodacom has unanimously decided that the prescribed device cost on the Red Classic + of R100 will be ignored and the previous smaller contract's device cost of R370 will be continued with. I suspect we would have paid this for the full 2 years if we hadn't picked up it with the higher bill cost. </p> <p> </p> <p>While trying to resolve the issue about the cell phone cost, we were directed to go to the Vodacom store where we signed the contract. When we got there, the Vodacom 4U in the Vaal Mall Vanderbijlpark, they indicated that they don't have any record of it being signed there. They were also not able to even indicate when the contract was signed. Gert Maas, the person assisting us, indicated that they individual stores cannot retrieve contracts from another store, but right thereafter he produced a summary of the contract from the Potchefstroom store. </p> <p> </p> <p>Finally, Gert Maas treated us as if we were idiots, not understanding where the device cost of R370 is coming from and that we could not possibly have signed the contract there in the store, even though I have a witness to prove this. He indicated that he will follow up on the contract and device cost, taking my nubmer and promised to call the next day, but we are still waiting... a week later. </p> <p> </p> <p>We are unbelievably unhappy with Vodacom in general and are seriously, seriously considering another service provider, even if it have to pay penalties to move over.</p> <p> </p> <p>Kind regards </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p> </p>