The Winners of the Worst Customer Experience

5 years ago, I was blown away by the professionalism and care I experienced with Vox Telecom's sales and accounts department. Today, however, I vow to never use Vox as an ISP if I can help it.

I wanted to transfer my account to a different owner, so I signed all the documents and shared them with the agent handling my case. The agent then dragged their feet (didn't do their job) so much that the account transfer request was denied due to "Missing the deadline for account transfer request", so I resubmitted all the documents to the same agent and asked for them to re-instate the case and transfer my account. Lo and behold, they re-instated my account transfer request, and then promptly let it go on until the deadline came and went AGAIN.

We called their accounts department to settle the situation and were met with resistance. Eventually, the agents and I settled on closing the account and creating a new one for the new residents of the property, as that seemed to be the quickest way to resolve the matter. What they didn't explain was that they would immediately switch off our internet access and we would have to wait 5 days till a new router arrived (we were under the impression that the current router was going to be utilised) till our internet access would be re-instated.

Water under the bridge though, right? Wrong.

6 MONTHS LATER, they contact me again saying my account needs to be settled as there is an outstanding balance. I ask them why and they explain that my account was closed prematurely and I need to ship the router back to them within 5 days or else they would hand it over to debt collection. Additionally, they would include the phrase "We have tried contacting you number numerous time without success", and when looking at my phone I would find that they indeed tried to call me, but the call only lasted 1 second... not even long enough for my phone to start playing my ringtone!

No amount of explaining what occurred 6 months prior changed their minds about my outstanding balance. So, I packaged the router and power supply and sent it to them. This seemed to quell their threats for a while until recently they explained that they didn't receive the power supply, so my account is still going to collection (I personally wrapped the power supply around the router). I called them to find out what my balance was and it turns out to be R250.00! You're going to send my account to debt collection over R250.00??

Surely there's better use of your time.

Additionally, whenever I call to speak to someone about the situation, I get forwarded to a different department where I very promptly get hung up on. Alternatively, the accounts agent will tell me my number has been shared to someone who will handle the case and contact me shortly - a week later I have yet to hear from anyone. I have no shortage of threatening emails though!

Absolutely despicable customer service, it's almost like they're trying to rub their names in the dirt. At this point they can blacklist me or threaten me however they want, I will not pay a cent more to this company and I refuse to ever use their services. There's plenty of competition anyways.