vodacom, what a nightmare – 18 July 2022

vodacom, what a nightmare – 18 July 2022

In April 2022, it was requested that vodacom convert our account with three cellular numbers from a private to a business account. After consultation with Marco at the vodacom Kenilworth Branch, the requested documents were sent via email to him. After some communication from our side to find out what was happening with the request, a month later one of the numbers was migrated to a business account. On the 9th of June 2022 the other two numbers were migrated. The reasons cited for the delay was that vodacom’s systems had crashed. I guess it takes two months for a company that relies on providing IT services to its clientele to solve internal IT problems. This speaks volumes of the poor service received from this behemoth. Unbeknownst to me my problems were to get much worse. The first sign that all was not well in the land of Oz was the fact that all my airtime (more than R300) and more than 200MB data was gone. I contacted the call centre (082 135) for business, and they were kind enough to tell me that one loses all one’s airtime and data when an account is migrated. I then emailed a complaint named “Dishonest Practice” to vodacom on 9 June 2022 at 10h47 and received an automated response on 9 June 2022 at 10h52 stating that they have received my email and “We endeavour to resolve all queries within 24-working hours”. I guess they are working on Jupiter time because I am still awaiting a further response. From this time, my wife and I have been contacting vodacom almost daily because since the migration my number had stopped working. No calls in or out, no data usage, only a useless appendage if it were not for a dual sim phone that could use another vodacom sim card that I have been using for years. The message initially received by callers when trying to contact me was, “this number does not exist, please dial carefully” (very zuma’ish). Daily I was given hoops to jump through and every time the supposed fix did not work. The message then changed to “the number is not available, please try again later”. Eventually I was told that my sim card number did not match their system’s and I had to purchase a new sim card because this was all my fault. I purchased another sim card and more hoops because the number kept stopping service and I kept calling the very helpfully intentioned call centre with very little luck (because you need it when fixing cellular connections, it seems). After more than a month I was able to receive and make calls and vodacom was proud of their success. For my troubles, they gifted me with 5GB 30-day data, 250 minutes anytime voice, and R160.00 airtime and the world was at peace (because I kept paying my non-existent account). A few days after vodacom’s ground-breaking success I realised that my data was not working (normally I use Wi-Fi at home and at my practice) – wash, rinse, repeat – I am calling them every few days because my number keeps resetting to not working fully and I am tired of vodacom’s ineptitude, to say the least. The call centre representative told me that as this was the first time that I called in for my data specifically not working, a new call must be logged, thus my problems, according to vodacom, has just started. Oh, and my dual sim phone (2 years old with dual vodacom sim cards, many more years old) is not supported by vodacom, so that must be the problem. When I told the representative that she must not talk **** about my dual sim phone, she was very willing to put the phone down because I was swearing at her. I need someone from vodacom who knows what they are doing to contact me to get my number working again, but I am not holding my breath. I failed to mention that I have been a loyal client of this behemoth for more that 20 years. But I guess this means nothing to them and this is what South Africans are expected to contend with when we want to stay in this country. Pay us and we will ***** you. Sounds very eskom’ish.