Shocking Customer Service

On 05/07/2017 I contacted an ISP for fibre to be installed at my Cluster. Fibrehoods have been in our area setting up since I moved there in Nov 2016, so I expected not to have any issues with getting a quick installation done. Well was I mistaken!! Fibrehoods said that I should choose my ISP and then through them get my fibre installation done. I struggled for 7 weeks until I eventually got my landlords involved as they agreed to pay for the installation of the fibre. So between them and I we started putting pressure on fibrehoods, who then said we need to deal with Vumatel, as this is apparently the owner company of Fibrehoods. This is where everything came to a grinding holt. I called them several times, we mailed their management, nothing, they kept on making excuses and escalating to others, etc etc etc. Let me tell you a more clueless service provider you will not find anywhere in South Africa. They are always escalating your issue to nowhere and if pushed in a corner they apologise profusely and move on to absolutely 0 solution. Then you need to start the e-mails again, which will fall on deaf ears, or until recently they start lying to you. Not entirely their fault, because they simply have no idea what they doing. They use excuses like I am only a sales agent and can only escalate it. Which they never do. Since then I had to find my third ISP, as the special deals expire.

But the great news at the end is they finally came to do the installation on Friday 22/09/2017 Appointment was booked for 11am and they called me to tell me that they where sitting outside my gate at 8:43am, but hey I was just happy they were finally there.(13 weeks after I first requested a fibre solution). I had to micro manage the whole installation, as the guys they sent from Britelink, drilled holes in electrical conduits in our walls, left cables exposed outside our unit etc etc etc. It cost me several calls at my own expense to get as far as installation complete, splicing complete (hopefully). Now the configuration process. The person in charge of our area in the call center promised that she did escalate (Their favourite word) our configuration request and even put it as extremely urgent. Or so she said, probably to just get rid of me on the phone and/or buy some time to get to Friday afternoon when they close for the long weekend. Not surprising when I called on Friday evening to enquire about the completion of the configuration I was told by another agent that there was no call logged and that she would immediately log a call (and you guessed it - ESCALATE) it to the relevant department with priority. Once again I called on Saturday morning to enquire about the configuration and was told (Not surprisingly) that no call was logged and that I will need to wait till Tuesday 26/09/2017 as there is nobody there over the weekend to attend to my configuration issue. But once again they would escalate it to the relevant department.

I called today again at 10:50am and was put on hold for about 9 minutes while the agent/consultant was checking on the status of my configuration issue. While on hold an sms came through to my phone to say that a call was logged with a reference number, I have no idea if it was for the configuration of my fibre device or my query, when the agent eventually got back to the phone call she said that a call was logged and gave me the ref number I already received via sms. She also said that she would escalate it to the relevant people and that I should check in 24 hours if its done or not.

I would like to make some recommendations to the management of Vumatel, you should remove two things from your organization. 1.) The word customer service, as I was told you strive to give good service to your customers - You have absolutely NO idea what customer service is, until you learn what it is you should not be allowed to use those two words. 2.) Remove the word "ESCALATE" from all the staff working there's vocabulary, they will have much less to say, thus less bullsh$#%ing your potential/unhappy/frustrated customers.

All the above is my experience with Vumatel. I know now that the experience getting fibre to your home is not a very pleasant thing but rather an absolute nightmare, I will definitely warn all my family, friends, work colleagues and even strangers to steer clear of this sad sad company that lack customer service and lack of empathy for their customers needs.

I am also fully aware that they will do nothing to remediate my unhappiness, as I am one of many people that are unhappy. Who knows they might just escalate it again to that place where no-one know your name or gives a **** about customer service.