Why Vodacom pisses me off

by Nic Haralambous on 23/06/2011

I recently took a business trip to Nairobi, Kenya. I should have known better, I should have thought it through, I should have bought a local sim card and I should have remembered the stories of horror from when I worked at Vodacom.

Alas, I did not. I was stupid and I kept my roaming on. My network settings switched me from Vodacom, a Vodafone network, to Safaricom, a Vodafone network. Makes sense. My data bundle didn’t switch with my location. I should have known that. They [Vodacom] charge massive, massive fees to data roam anywhere in the world. My mistake for even having it on. That’s not what I’m angry about. I screwed that up and forgot to put it off.

What I am angry about is the situation I found myself in AFTER the fact, because during the crime of browsing NO ONE called me, sms’d me or emailed me to say: “Hey Nic, you idiot, did you know that your bill is double, triple, quadruple, five times, six times, seven times, eight times, nine times and finally ten times what it has been on average for the past TEN years”. I have been a customer of theirs for almost ten years at the top end of their package offers and have paid all of my bills on time and loyally so for that entire period.

Vodacom didn’t have the systems built in to give me a courtesy call to say that they have noticed unusually high activity. I received an SMS upon my return to Cape Town (2 days after my trip) that I had spent more than double my account. Then a phonecall the next day to say that it was ten times my normal account. TEN TIMES with no alerts.

I feel screwed and not in the good way. I feel like Vodacom purposefully waited NOT to tell me while I was over there so that they could finish taking me and my account for all it was worth, then upon my return, they alerted me out of the goodness of their hearts that I had just been screwed.

It’s unacceptable to me that they let my account get that far out of hand (even though I acknowledge it was my mistake) without alerting a very long term, loyal and trusted customer of theirs to his error.

I am very interested to know from anyone who does know, what the new CPA says about this sort of situation.

I’m livid. I’m paying, figuratively and literally, for my insane lack of attention to my cellphone carrier screwing me on data costs while roaming. I am also paying for my blatant stupidity in this entire situation. It was my mistake to leave it on but honestly, what horrible customer loyalty service from a business that’s been taking my money for ten years.

I feel dirty (and not the good kind of dirty).

nharalambous@gmail.com

There are 6 comments in this article:

  1. 23/06/2011Adii says:

    Same thing happened to me last year. R13k bill later means I wasn’t very impressed either. Suffice to say, never again.

  2. 23/06/2011Steve says:

    That is why I left Vodacom for MTN.

    I was with Vodacom for over 10 years, and when it came time to Upgrade as I do every 2 years, There was a spat about a pay-in for the upgrade. A really small fee, and it struck me, that they obviously dont care about loyalty and a customer that spent on average over R6000 per year for the past 10 years.

    South Africans are constantly getting taken for a ride, and experience appalling customer service the majority of the time.

  3. 23/06/2011Arūnas says:

    At least in my country, roaming charges take time to clear. For example, if i go abroad at the end of the month, some of roaming fees are in the NEXT months bill, because it takes 3-5 days for the data about them to reach my carrier.
    So probably they didint have the data at the moment. What they SHOULD have done, is courtesy SMS at the moment you switch to another network: “Hey, remember that data roaming charges apply from now on!”.

  4. 23/06/2011Jess Green says:

    Nic,

    I have the same to say, sorry to Vodacom, but they did this to me too while I was overseas and also on a cruise, so you can imagine the costs at sea with satellites! Even to receive a missed call costs money!!

    The main problem was that I did call them to set it up, and was only supposed to be able to SMS, which they confirmed.

    Basically they need a better service for setting up and managing roaming, and also somehow do it so that one can KNOW that you won’t get screwed. Online would be a good start.

  5. 7/07/2011Lisa says:

    I called Vodacom to ask about data charges on roaming (to be an informed customer and avoid the above horror story) You now have to pay a R5000 deposit which they keep for 3 months before they give it back to you without any interest.

    The customer suffers because Vodacom does not have systems to inform you that you are going over an agreed limit. Vodaphone in the UK offers this service. Vodacom won’t bother to implement it, they’d rather rip their customers off. My travel partner is using a Vodacom prepaid, get this..to top up Vodacom recommends that you SMS friends in SA to top up your account! Nice.

  6. 12/07/2011Riyaad says:

    I’ve had a similar experience with serious over charging on MTN (contract through Nashua Mobile). They’ve charged me R65,000 for one line item when I was roaming in the UAE.

    After looking into it though, I noticed some issues. Their claim was that 441MB of data was downloaded in the session. Looking through the bill, the download happened within 6hours. After checking roaming agreements with MTN and the foreign network, we confirmed the data speed was a GPRS connection 48kbps). Which means that it’s technically impossible for that event to have happened.

    Sad that SA telco’s can get away with so much without any actual channels for customers to direct legit claims to.

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