Due to the Coronavirus lockdown my wife and I have to work from home. As a consequence our data usage has significantly increased. My current cellular data package is 50GB/30GB, and I expect to need in excess of 200GB per month for April and May. I can’t top up 20GB at a time @R699 per bundle, as that will be insanely expensive.
I spoke to their call centre and the options to me were upgrade my package to a larger package, but that will only come into affect on 1st May (not helpful), and there will be a penalty when I want to downgrade back to 50/30. Or, I can start a new contract immediately, but there will be a penalty to cancel my existing contract, and there will be another penalty when I downgrade from the larger plan back to my preferred 50GB/30GB plan.
I spoke to a "Manager" at Vodacom, and asked if there was anything that could be done. All I was asking were for the penalties to be waived, was happy to upgrade to or start a new 300GB package at R999 per month, I would wait the obligatory 3 month wait period before making a change to my contract, and then downgrade back to my 50GB/30GB package. The only response I got was that this is how the contracts are written, and the T&C's must be adhered to. I asked if he could motivate to more senior management, he said he would. Needless to say I have not heard a thing from him.
Managed to get hold of a Vodacom rep on Facebook messenger, they were more focused on migrating me to fibre, they lost interest pretty quickly when they found I was not in a fibre area, and have not heard anything back since.
In light of fibre providers upgrading line speeds for free, I think its bad form for Vodacom to not offer anything to their customers during this national disaster. I'm not asking for anything free, just to offer a bit of flexibility in how they implement their T&C's.
I spoke to their call centre and the options to me were upgrade my package to a larger package, but that will only come into affect on 1st May (not helpful), and there will be a penalty when I want to downgrade back to 50/30. Or, I can start a new contract immediately, but there will be a penalty to cancel my existing contract, and there will be another penalty when I downgrade from the larger plan back to my preferred 50GB/30GB plan.
I spoke to a "Manager" at Vodacom, and asked if there was anything that could be done. All I was asking were for the penalties to be waived, was happy to upgrade to or start a new 300GB package at R999 per month, I would wait the obligatory 3 month wait period before making a change to my contract, and then downgrade back to my 50GB/30GB package. The only response I got was that this is how the contracts are written, and the T&C's must be adhered to. I asked if he could motivate to more senior management, he said he would. Needless to say I have not heard a thing from him.
Managed to get hold of a Vodacom rep on Facebook messenger, they were more focused on migrating me to fibre, they lost interest pretty quickly when they found I was not in a fibre area, and have not heard anything back since.
In light of fibre providers upgrading line speeds for free, I think its bad form for Vodacom to not offer anything to their customers during this national disaster. I'm not asking for anything free, just to offer a bit of flexibility in how they implement their T&C's.
