A game of hot potato, and you're the potato

Prior to this week I had, honest to god, had no issues with both WebAfrica and my MTN LTE connection in three years. Customer support was always quick, within half an hour for me. The occasional connection issues, but nothing that would be out of the ordinary for even a perfect ISP.

And then I was issued a new MTN LTE sim by WebAfrica. Router won't recognise the sim - it's missing/invalid. It takes me THREE DAYS to get ahold of customer support, who tells me that it will take 48 business hours - yes, you read that correctly - to activate. I point out that I can't even update the APN details, the customer support says that I must do that after activation. Alright, I say. Come the next Monday, and I've had enough. I've chewed through mobile data, and the connection keeps cutting out, causing all my work file uploads to fail. I request customer support help at 1pm. I finally get an agent to speak to me at 7pm - yes, you read that right. The agent is very surprised that the previous agent told me that activation comes prior to APN setting - it's actually the other way around. The sim must be faulty. It's alright though, they'll escalate an enquiry about a replacement sim, and will have feedback for me within 24 hours. 24 hours pass and....nothing. Naturally. So I open up customer support again, and wait. Finally get connected and, why, what do you know. Apparently I - I, ME, MYSELF - should have somehow guessed that the customer support person I spoke to was not the person to actually to make that sim cancellation/replacement request, and I needed to have spoken to a sales person. They ask which agent I spoke to, and do I have a reference number? Surprise, I spoke to YOU and no, I don't have a reference number, because WA doesn't give you a reference number. There's no way to choose which department to speak to, and this is supposed to be customer support, not customer self service. Alright, I say. Put me on to a sales person.

Finally get through to a sales person, who tells me that actually, I need to speak to onboarding! Which is odd, because I was quite literally just speaking to onboarding. They say they can't help me and transfer me back. I get transferred through to a few other agents before someone can finally cancel the sim and request a replacement. Finally! Oh finally! I've been on customer service for literally ten hours at this point. I bounced around literally eight different agents like a hot potato. Then, the kicker: I'm informed that I have to pay a delivery fee. Yes, a delivery fee, for something that was their problem in the first place. And no. They can't tell me what the delivery time will be. I'm moving to another ISP.