When did it become such a mission to upgrade at Vodacom?

I recently tried to upgrade my son's cellphone contract and after 2 months and 9 visits we have still to be sorted out.

We kept on getting calls from Vodacom informing us that his contract was due for an upgrade. After each call we would visit a Vodacom store only to be told that although the contract was due for an upgrade there are still a number of payments on the handset and we are thus unable to upgrade unless we pay an additional amount each month. We kept on getting the calls and we kept on going in to upgrade - only to hear the same story. During the 5th visit we were eventually able to go ahead with the upgrade only to find out that an upgrade had already been done via Vodacom Direct.

This was a ********** transaction, because I was not called, informed or asked if I wanted this upgrade. It was also double the amount I wanted to spend and did not include the handset we wanted. We then managed to report this and the system allowed us to do an upgrade. However, at the end of May I was billed for the ********** contract. Once again I had to spend time and energy trying to sort this out. At the end of June the usual debit order did not go off of my account, my son's sim card was subsequently blocked. We went in to the Vodacom store yet again to sort this out. We paid the amount outstanding and were told that the sim would work. It did not. We went in the following day to do a sim swap. Again without success. On our third visit today we were told that there is a problem with the handset (a month old Huawei P20 lite) and that it would have to be sent in for repairs. This can possibly take 3 weeks. So after 2 months and 9 visits to a Vodacom store we have a contract but no cell phone. Although the staff at the Atterbury Value Mart store were helpful, I have to question the competency of Vodacom Direct and Vodacom in general.