Vodacom treats clients as ********s rather than considering track record

I gave birth two weeks ago. Needless to say amidst a host of medical complications I was a bit distracted and I forgot to ensure there was enough money in my cheque account for my debit orders. In addition, there was a public holiday and long weekend, and Vodacom's debit order came late, with no notice thereof. Therefore my Vodacom debit order bounced.

As soon as I received the notification, I moved money into my cheque account, and phoned Vodacom to try and rectify my mistake. This was on 4 April at 16:30. My husband spoke to a young man who took about 30 mins to find a solution for us to get the money to Vodacom. He said that he would set up an automatic debit order, and that due to the long weekend it would only come off on Tuesday 11 April. I asked him if we couldn't set the debit order for sooner. He said no due to the long weekend; the system needed time to generate the invoice and debit order. However when he tried to set it for Tuesday he ran into some issues, and so set it for Thursday 6 April after all. We ended the call amicably and I gave him a good rating.

Thursday 6 April came and went, and no money was debited. Tuesday came and went and no money was debited. I wondered whether we should phone Vodacom again, but was frustrated at the admin burden and that this employee of Vodacom hadn't done what he had promised.

On Thursday 13 April our phones were cut off. Without any warning, no attempt to contact us. This placed us in an extremely difficult situation as we were about to begin a long trip, and now had no airtime and no data. In South Africa this is not safe. I cannot believe Vodacom would treat clients like this.

We are clients who have NEVER missed a debit order before. Did Vodacom even consider our track record? Or are we all just assumed to be ********s defaulting on our payments? Even those of us who immediately take the initiative to rectify the situation and then get messed around by *********** employees?

We then phoned on Thursday around 12:30, while at a doctors appointment (this was when our phones got cut off), and spoke to an employee who was rather infuriating. Only after about 20 mins of insisting that what happened did actually happen, and asking the lady to check (she refused at first) she found out that the employee last week actually didn't set up an automatic debit order, but a manual payment. He did so without informing us, and without even giving us the banking details! How ludicrous!

She then told us that given the extenuating circumstances she would reactivate our calls (not our data!) and we had to pay immediately. As soon as I was back home with wifi, I made the payment (around 2pm). She had promised that within 5 hours after payment, our contract would be reinstated. It is now 19 hours later and our contract is still not reinstated. This would mean another phone call to Vodacom and more admin for us.

I am absolutely shocked at this treatment. Given our excellent track record, could Vodacom not have organized a courtesy call to us to see what had happened and see whether they could swiftly organise the payment to be fixed? Why are we suddenly treated like ********s?

Furthermore, can they not train their employees properly? Why are they so ***********?

I'm really disappointed.