WORST SERVICE EVER

Let me start by saying that I was a loyal Vodacom contract client for over 20 years on my previous contract with them.

On 1 October 2024 I tried applying for a new contract with Vodacom, when the agent got to the credit verification stage, the system gave an error "customers existing account in arrears". I know I had an account a few years ago that was settled Feb 2022. The agent then told me to call Accounts to get this sorted, as they could see on the old account profile that it was settled. I spoke to Accounts and was advised to wait until the next day (2nd Oct) and to expect a call with an update. The 2nd I did not receive a call, and phoned again with the same result. This was repeated on the 3rd again. On the 4th, a different agent informed me that it needs to be escalated to Legal for them to update the system, which would take a few working days.

Monday, 7th Oct, I received and email from legal, and phoned Sales again to follow up. The result was the same as the previous week. And the same on the 8th, when I phoned again. On the 9th I was told by the agent that day, that he is escalating the matter to someone higher up and that he would personally phone me on Friday 11 Oct with an update, and that I should not contact Vodacom in the meantime. Friday afternoon I phoned because I had not heard anything. The sales agent told me that everything seems to be updated, but I did the application through the online side, and she works for online, but not the correct department, and would request that someone from the correct department call me back either Saturday or Monday at the latest.

Monday afternoon I phoned yet again, by this time I have spent more on airtime talking to Vodacom than what the contract I was looking to get would cost me per month. Monday I spoke to an agent, that informed me that the original error was not yet removed from the system, and that I should phone Subscriber Collections on Tuesday between 8am and 5pm to get them to update the system.

Tuesday, 15 October, yes 2 weeks after I tried to apply the first time, I could not get through to subscriber collections on their number, and eventually called customer care and asked them to just transfer me, which worked, and I was quickly informed by subscriber collections that I should speak to legal, and was transferred again, unsuccessfully. I tried phoning them numerous times, with no luck, was transferred numerous times, with the call just dropping. I asked the last agent I spoke to if I could speak to a manager as this has been going on for TWO WEEKS, and was told a manager would call me back within an hour. The manager never called me... I then decided to reply on the email from legal that I received the previous Monday, hoping to get some response.

Wednesday morning, I got the reply I was hoping for "account is updated you can be able to take up a new contract" (quoted verbatim), which I forwarded to the agent that assisted me on Monday, who was great. Within 5 minutes I got the reply from the agent, same error still on the system.

By this time I was seriously fed up, and as an experiment, I contacted MTN contract upgrades via email, not having any contracts with them this made the most sense. Their agent assisted me over whatsapp to get the necessary documents emailed to them, and so the process was started, or the race was on to see who could assist me quicker. Sure, Vodacom had a 2 week head start, but lets see.

So we come to today, 17 October, Vodacom legal updated me via email that they would like me to ask the agent to find out exactly what the error said. They could just scroll through the mail to see the email address of said agent, but no, let's ask the client to contact someone in our organization. So I did, and promptly received an email from said agent with an attached screenshot that I promptly forwarded to legal. This was at 10:06 on 17th October. Meanwhile just before this at 09:57 MTN phoned met to get the process started. We were on the phone for 12 minutes, and the agent told me that he will run the credit check and all that stuff and phone me back. At 10:27 he phoned me back, which surprised me because for 2 weeks, Vodacom promised to call me back daily and that never happened once. 8 minutes later I got a new contract with MTN for the same device, for basically the same price, so in summary: Vodacom: 2 weeks, no call backs, no issues resolved (not counting the 2 and a half years the account department had time to update the system) and never received a single reference number regarding this issue, and no contract MTN: a few whatapps and 20 minutes on the phone, new contract sorted.