Vodacom's Incompetence and Exploitative Pricing

I am beyond frustrated and angry with Vodacom’s abysmal service regarding the porting of my number to Telkom. Despite dealing with both the Cavendish branch in Cape Town and the Customer Care Team, this issue remains unresolved.

The process has been a complete nightmare. I attempted to port my number on 3 August 2024 after purchasing a Telkom SIM. I was assured that I’d receive an SMS from Vodacom with a PIN to complete the process, but it only arrived the next day—long after the PIN had expired. After contacting Telkom and repeating the process, I STILL haven’t received the required SMS from Vodacom.

The reason I’m leaving Vodacom in the first place is because of their exorbitant data prices. I’m spending over R600 per month on airtime and data, and Vodacom’s exploitative pricing model ensures that any unused data is forfeited after 30 days. This is a blatant rip-off.

I went back to Cavendish today to repeat the process. After sorting out everything on Telkom’s end today, I still have not received the SMS from Vodacom. When I visited the Vodacom store at Cavendish, I was told to either wait indefinitely or contact customer support, which has been a futile exercise. After a tedious call with the help centre, I was told no porting request had even been received from Telkom. How is this possible when I followed all the steps? I am waiting to hear back from Vodacom on Facebook. Their online consultants are not available to chat and their virtual chatbot, TObi seems to be glitching. Their email-autoresponse says all communication must go through TObi.

To add insult to injury, I was told that my number is still incorrectly listed under a contract in my mother’s name, despite transferring it to prepaid and to my own account back in 2019. How could it possibly be on a contract when I have to prepay for airtime and data each month?

This whole ordeal is unacceptable. Vodacom, you need to take immediate action, fix your system, and ensure my number is ported without any further inconvenience. I’m sick and tired of this runaround, and I expect this to be resolved immediately.

Despite my best efforts, I am now stuck paying for both Vodacom and Telkom services while Vodacom fails to deliver on a basic porting request. This entire situation is absolutely unacceptable, and Vodacom needs to take responsibility and resolve this immediately.

Avoid Vodacom at all costs if you value your time, money, and sanity!