Why can't I speak to someone who can actually help me?

<p>Dear Vodacom. Yours is possibly the worst service I have ever encountered. My phone was lost and then recovered. In the interim I had it blacklisted. On 04 July I sent the paperwork to get it un-blacklisted on 5 July I received an email that my phone had been un-blacklisted and should remain off for 24 hours. I was unable to do that immediately due to work reasons (as with most people my phone doubles as diary etc.). After 24 hours I phoned customer care 082111 and was told that the phone had to be powered off for 24 hours so, fair enough, I made alternate arrangements for a loan phone and powered my phone off for 24 hours (so far so good, I understand that there are security issues to consider). When I switched it back on again 24 hours later, still no luck. I phoned customer care again, who told me to reset network settings and a variety of other things, still nothing. Eventually I was told to go to the closest Vodacom shop, which I did and still they could not help me. I phoned “customer care” numerous times yesterday, explaining that I have done everything that I was asked to do and the phone still wasn’t working, I had to speak to someone in the un-blacklisting department. I was told that they could not be phoned but a service request would be logged and they would revert within 48 hours. I found this completely unsatisfactory as I had already waited a number of days to comply with all your protocols and could not understand why when my phone was supposed to be working I had to now wait a further 48 hours for a technician to reply on a problem that should already be solved. Nonetheless a service request was logged which the call centre agent read out too me clearly stating that I should be contacted immediately. Nothing happened. I contacted “customer care” again and again a message was sent for me to be contacted. I also emailed ********** asking to be contacted. Again nothing happened. Today I phoned again, this time insisting that I be given a number to call, only to be told that “there is no number” in 2016 I find it very difficult to believe that these technicians don’t have phones on their desks. At this point I lost my **** and admittedly the poor call centre agent with whom I last spoke bore the brunt of my past week’s frustration. I asked for a complaints number that I could phone to speak to someone about the issue, only to be told that there is no number I had to use the website. I stated that I actually wanted to speak to a live human being and was told that this would not be possible. My questions are simple: As your customer, why on earth can I not phone the department that should be dealing with the situation, when what I was told would happen clearly didn’t happen? If numerous call-centre agents were unable to help me then why were they not empowered to escalate the query to someone who could? And, who on earth are these technicians that they can refuse to be contacted no matter what the problem? (I could not conceive of running a successful business where instead of speaking to clients, they were told that I would be sent a message and I would then consider sending them a message back in 48 hours!!). To top it all off, while I’ve been typing this I received a message on the loan phone which reads, “Dear customer kindly note, no documents attached on your service request. unblacklisted request. Kind regards Vodacom Customer Care Deborah Kekane”. I SUBMITTED DOCUMENTS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE WEEK DEBORAH AND ALREADY RECEIVED CONFIRMATION OF THE SUPPOSED UN-BLACKLISTING. It is precisely this level of incompetence that results in my insistence that I may speak directly to someone who can actually help me. Final question: Are you actively trying to give me a heart attack?</p>