Wow. What appalling service from Vodacom. I’m so angry I can hardly type.<\/p>\n
Here’s the chain of events that started this…<\/p>\n
I’m sick in bed with flu right now. An incoming sms beep woke me up. ‘Cool,’ I thought, ‘my girlfriend.’<\/p>\n
It wasn’t my girlfriend. It was Bogart Rosebank, a clothing store, with the following message:<\/p>\n
‘Our Winter Sale has started at Bogart Rosebank and Woodlands Pretoria,
\nAll shoes up to 25% and selected clothing items, offers at Eli,
\nselected items up to 25%.’<\/p>\n
Now this is not the first Bogart sms I’ve received. I’ve probably
\ngotten at least 20 of them in the past months. Now I’ve phoned Bogart
\nbefore to ask them to remove my cellphone number from their spam list.
\nAside from the fact that I didn’t ASK to receive their spam in the
\nfirst place, I’m not in their target market, and I despise their
\nclothing.<\/p>\n
So today when this sms came, I tried replying to the sms. But for some reason, that option wasn’t available. ‘Odd,’ I thought.<\/p>\n
I checked message details. Instead of a number in the number field, a company name appears. It’s a company called Logic SMS.<\/p>\n
I phoned Vodacom’s directory listings service, and asked for Logic
\nSMS’s telephone number. It doesn’t exist. I phoned Telkom and asked the
\nsame thing. Logic SMS doesn’t exist in their books.<\/p>\n
So I decided to do the next best thing. To cut this off at the source.
\nVodacom is the company ALLOWING these spam smss to get through, so
\nthey’re obliged to make them stop.<\/p>\n
I was on hold for 17 minutes before a pleasant lady called Rowy spoke to me.<\/p>\n
‘Hi Rowy,’ I said. And I explained that I wanted Vodacom to stop this spam from being allowed to get to my phone.<\/p>\n
She couldn’t help me. At first she suggested that I should phone
\nAutopage Cellular, my service provider. I explained that this has
\nnothing to do with me or my service provider, and has to do with the
\ncompany allowing sms spam to get through the lines, namely Vodacom. She
\nsaw it differently. ‘You need to phone Bogart themselves,’ she
\nexplained.<\/p>\n
‘May I speak to your supervisor?’ I said.<\/p>\n
And I got through to Charlton. He was also very pleasant. But he was
\ntoeing the party line. ‘Vodacom isn’t responsible for the sms. Bogart
\nis. You need to speak to them to get you off the list.’<\/p>\n
‘Nope. You guys are the people who let the spam through, so you guys
\nare the ones who need to stop it. I do not have any opt-out options,
\nwhich you guys are obliged to provide. So I’m holding you responsible.
\nMay I speak to your supervisor please?’<\/p>\n
So I got through to [EDIT: The Supervisor. REASON: No need to name her]. I said, ‘I am receiving spam\u00a0smss from a company, and I’d like Vodacom to make this stop.’<\/p>\n
‘Impossible,’ she said. ‘You have to phone the company that’s sending the smss.’<\/p>\n
‘May I speak with your supervisor, please?’<\/p>\n
‘Can you explain WHY you want to speak to my supervisor?’<\/p>\n
‘Yes. I’d like your supervisor to take action and make the spam smss stop.’<\/p>\n
‘I’ve already exlpained to you that it’s not Vodacom’s responsibility to do this…’<\/p>\n
‘May I speak to your supervisor please?’<\/p>\n
‘Only if you explain why you want to speak to my supervisor.’<\/p>\n
‘I’ve already explained, and I’ve now been on the phone for
\nthirty-seven minutes, and I want to speak to your supervisor please.
\nWhat is your supervisor’s name?’<\/p>\n
‘Xavier.’<\/p>\n
‘May I speak with Xavier, please?’<\/p>\n
‘Only when you’ve explained what you want to talk to Xavier about.’<\/p>\n
This continued, on and on and on. At a certain point, I said, ‘Are you familiar with a technique called ‘broken record’? That’s where
\nI repeat my request over and over until you put me through to Xavier?’<\/p>\n
‘Yes, I’m familiar with the technique and I can also use it,’ she said. And proceeded to use it.<\/p>\n
I got her name. And asked for her email address. ‘I’m not going to give
\nyou my email address,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you the email address of
\ncustomer care.’<\/p>\n
‘I don’t need customer care’s email address, I need yours,
\nbecause I want to cc you into the correspondence I have with your
\nsuperiors.’<\/p>\n
‘Well you can’t have my email address. You can have my employee number. It’s 9177.’<\/p>\n
‘Is this call being recorded?’ I asked. ‘Cos I hope your superiors listen to it.<\/p>\n
And then I put the phone down.<\/p>\n