Vox

Dear Vox

It is a slap in the face to be thanked for our patience, when our patience with Vox has cost us over R3,000.00 in lawyers’ fees, just to try to get Vox to engage with us! A large proportion of the amount is simply the cost of follow-ups to unanswered telephone lines and the failure to revert to our lawyers, when they promise Vox that they will do so. It seems that only shaming Vox in public, via the Hello Peter platform, has any effect, whatsoever. This is why I now bring our direct correspondence with Vox onto this platform.

My husband, Mr B....... , has tried to engage telephonically with Vox through its employee Courtney ***x, but it became clear to him that she does not understand the nuances of contracts and he therefore contacted Courtney’s senior, Mr M....... B.......... of Vox, in writing. Mr B... initially swiftly investigated and responded, but as you will see below, has not responded again since 18/3/2022:-

Extracts from B.... 1st email to M B of Vox, dated 18/3/2022:-

[Dear ……….

I am writing to you, since Courtney ***x constantly talks over me when I am trying to make a point to her and she refused to put me through to you, or to provide me with your telephone number. She tried to divert me to Letitia S***. who Courtney says deals with handovers. In other words, she is saying that we are wasting our time with the Hello Peter complaint and with our lawyers, since we have already been handed over.

We are aware that Letitia wants to arrange to collect equipment from our old address. It is a pity that it has taken a Hello Peter complaint to get Vox Telecom to finally try to make this simple arrangement. If you care to look back …….

Vox also refused to cancel the deductions from my credit card and kept debiting my card, long after I had cancelled the contract. For almost a year, Vox has refused to indicate to me precisely where, in the contract wording, it believes that the contract that we entered into, binds me for 12 months of recurring payments, or for installation costs. …….. Vox relies solely on clauses 13.1 and 13.2 of the contract. The Vox salesperson …….. told us not to worry, since the contract was month-to-month, with no other longer "minimum period" involved. Either he did not understand the contract the same way that your staff does, or he misled us.

In any event, nowhere in the documents that I received from Vox, is an amount (or amounts) comprising the "...once-off set up or configuration or installation fee ...", as per clause 13.1, mentioned. The wording of clause 13.2 is important: "Should Vox offer to conditionally waive or subsidise the fee(s) referred to in clause 13.1 above...". In order for Vox to legitimately offer to waive a set up fee, it would have to quantify that fee, but …. no fee amount is stated anywhere in the documents. Then, in order for clauses 13.1 and 13.2 to take effect, Vox would have to explicitly make me an offer to waive .... the set up fee of .. R1,500, on condition that I do not cancel my contract within …. 12 months. To do otherwise is an obvious attempt to present me with a contract that appears to be a month-to-month contract, but is in effect a 12 month minimum period contract, sneaked in "through the back door", so to speak.

However, it is obvious that Vox never quantified the fee for me and never made an offer to me to waive said fee. Therefore clauses 13.1 and 13.2 do not apply to me in this instance …

I would appreciate your response.

Mr B



MB of Vox’s response to 1st email from BR dated 18/3/2022:-

[……..Thank you for your email. The content thereof is noted. I investigated your account & my findings are as follows:

Unfortunately I cannot answer for Mathew Kxx >as to why the cancellation fee was not mentioned. However, this was stated in the terms & conditions of the contract. As per CPA, the onus is on all consumers to read & understand all the terms & conditions of any contract before signing/accepting it.



With regards to the Set Up and Configuration/ Installation Fees:

Vox Telecom works with multiple Fibre Network Operators (FNO’s) who supplies the fibre lines to Vox & then who in turn supplies it to the customer. These Set Up and Configuration/ Installation Fees varies from FNO to FNO. Therefore a set amount of these fees is not stipulated in the terms & conditions. The clause serves as a notification & condition to the contract. This fee does however, reflect on all invoices once it is generated. Please see snippet of the first invoice generated on your account:

B W Note – [this note represents an image file embedded in the Vox email, which did indeed show, that as from the date of the 22/1/2021 Vox invoice, the “setup of R2733.00” is mentioned (in fine print) in the invoice, but is not yet billed – the invoice total is still only the monthly fee of R919.]

With regards to cancellation of the account:

As per your email below, the initial cancellation notice was sent to No Reply email address. Therefore effectively, Vox did not receive this notification & continued to provide the service. The cancellation was then rectified & received in May 2021. This resulted in June 2021 being the notice period as per the terms & conditions of the contract.

Based on the above, all charges are valid. The account was therefore handed over to third party debt collectors due to non-payment……

…..]



Extracts from BR W's 2nd email to MB of Vox, in response to the email from. Mr MB of Vox to him, dated 18/3/2022:-

[…… There is no logical connection between the following two sentences in said email:

(1) "Vox Telecom works with multiple Fibre Network Operators (FNO’s) who supplies the fibre lines to Vox & then who in turn supplies it to the customer. These Set Up and Configuration/ Installation Fees varies from FNO to FNO."

AND

(2) "Therefore a set amount of these fees is not stipulated in the terms & conditions."

It does not follow from the fact that you allege that Vox uses multiple FNO's to supply fibre lines, that Vox does not know what the cost of the service will be before providing me with a quote and a contract! If …. FNO, you will already have been quoted it and may even have paid it, at the same time as you are entering into the contract …. At the very latest time, by the time that you issue my first invoice to me, you will have had the "set up and configuration /installation" done and will already be providing me with the fibre Internet service. I have just checked all of my 2020 invoices and none of them have that tiny note about the "set up of R2733.00". So ..… invoice? This is an unfair business practice, designed to hide the negative aspects of signing up for fibre Internet services with Vox. As ……. wonder?

In …….. for that.

……BRW]



To date, there has been no response to BR W 2nd email to M B of Vox, either to BR Wilkinseanne F in person, or via the Hello Peter platform.

I further wish to also point out that Vox makes it extremely difficult for a customer to know how to go about cancelling an agreement with them. Mr B correctly states that our “..initial cancellation notice was sent to No Reply email address…”, but what is not acknowledged by him, is that virtually all correspondence from Vox is sent from No Reply email addresses and that it is very difficult to find any other kind of email address on Vox correspondence, contracts, guides, or on its website. Then when one does find the supposed single email address that Vox purports will properly notify it of an intention to cancel, then Vox takes weeks to respond, but ….., with reference to a strange clause in the contract which purports to allow Vox to delay the cancellation, while Vox tries to convince the customer not to cancel, unless they want to be forced to pay the harsh cancellation penalty – the amount of which only becomes known to the customer at that very time! This is patently unfair!

As expected no response from Vox. Only use this company if you are prepared to spend considerable time, energy and finances in trying to get them to respond to issues which clearly a number of others share with us. Read all comments on this site before even considering Vox and then save yourself a lot of stress by finding another company. Please!