Johannesburg - A Vodacom billing shocker put a damper on Fin24 reader, Hendrik Swart’s festive season after being slapped with a massive R7 077.31 bill despite adding a R2 000 soft cap to his account.
“I received a notification to say that I had reached my soft cap of R2 000 – I could not make or receive calls, SMSs and WhatsApp messages, which I understood would happen,” Swart told Fin24.
He added that he was surprised when he received a bill from the service provider stating that he had exceeded his soft cap by more than R5 000.
“I continuously contacted the network to no avail. I have two contracts on my name from Vodacom, so today (Wednesday) an amount for over R8 000 was deducted from my account,” he told Fin24.
“It really does put a damper on Christmas,” he added.
Swart said that he had been a loyal Vodacom client for several years and initially had a soft cap of R1 500 which he had increased to R2 000 when upgrading to an Apple iPhone.
READ: Data shock: Vodacom calms unhappy clients
“I have specially placed the soft cap on my account due to affordability and to maintain my account and to prevent such surprises. Vodacom seemingly decided not to honour their contractual responsibilities towards its customers and to disingenuously allow accounts to exceed the agreed soft cap and then arrogantly expect customers to merely accept and pay,” he said.
Fin24 attempted to contact Vodacom regarding Swart’s bill, but they could not be reached for comment.
However, Vodacom recently reached out to three disappointed customers who turned to Fin24 over their unexpected hefty data bills.
The network responded saying: "We have looked into most of the customer queries that were published on Fin24 and can confirm that Vodacom has reached an amicable resolution with Kerosha Naidoo, Anton Swart and Robin Page and that all three customers are happy with the outcomes."
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