The greatest supporter or South African supporters hasn't been very supportive of late. In fact South Africa's leading cellular provider appears to have lost the plot, and now, so have I.
Just more than a week ago I defaulted on a debit payment, entirely my mistake, but an innocent mistake. I really didn't expect my phone bill to be over R1500, but I get so many Please Call Me's that attempts to cut down on this obscene amount have so far failed.
Two Reasons
So the reason why the debit order defaulted was twofold: I underestimated how much I love my girlfriend, and I'm in the habit of wiring most of the target account's money to put out fires in other accounts, including AX credit cards.
So when I received the first ominous SMS's from Vodacom, I thought they would provide the same solution that Mutual and Federal offered me once upon a time. They give you a two week period of grace, and then pull off the original, outstanding amount in a second debit attempt. Makes sense eh?
So I call the number on my cellphone and have a long chat to the gentlemen, who says yes, it's fine if I agree for this month's account to go off with the next month's. Great. Great service. Thanks.
Service Suspended
Two days after this call my service is suspended, meaning I cannot make calls, send sms or anything else. This means I can't even call Vodacom from my phone is ask: "WTF?"
This is probably less than a week since my original default. And KOO KOO, this is also the first default in the history of my 16 month contract. Jeepers man!
The next day the real nightmare begins. I call a number, and then am quickly told to dial another number. This is a call centre; and once upon a time I worked at call centres. This is called passing the buck. Each person jumps into my nightmare, because the water is warm.
Escalation
Initially, pretending I'm chilling in the jacuzzi with my peeps, I patiently retell the same story and then I am told I'm in the wrong department, can I call back to another number. Then I start getting contradictory messages. I mean c'mon, who wants to be doing THAT in your jacuzzi?
After spending another R1500 (not on a weekend in Dullstroom)on holding and communicating fruitlessly to unsure, rude and abrupt call centre people, I finally ask the fifth person - who says I should go to a Vodashop to sort this out - if I can speak to her supervisor. I ask not to be put on hold and am then disconnected. It's time for a very short, very intense, very cleansing, cry.
Over the weekend, I take a nice relaxing drive to a Vodashop. This is a wonderful venue to unwind after working all week. The fellow in the shop helpfully provides me with a list of numbers to call.
Couldn't Care Less
It's interesting isn't it? You suspend someone's service, then design a maze filled with a plethora of uninformed people. When you suggest cancelling your contract altogether, they smugly say: "That's something we can arrange for you." Thank you!
It's difficult to match the image of 'leading cellular network' and 'greatest supporter of South African supporters' with person after person who seems to lack basic knowledge of their own product, and worse, really can't seem to care any less than they do. KOH KWAH!
A General Malaise in the Service Sector?
Is it Vodacom's fault or is this the sort of promising service we can expect from South Africans working for service providers?
A chap from Virgin Active called at the end of October, and I arranged with him to email me. He must be dead; he never did. Having returned fairly recently to South Africa, I've applied for a tax number from SARS. Assurance that this would be sent to me. Another tax person murdered?
Alexander Forbes: I handed personal documents including ID number, bank statements and the rest to a deaf young man who promotes a Medical Health scheme at my company, asking him to hand deliver these. Why? Identity theft has struck a colleague in our office in the last month. I didn't want the same risk, so I asked for this precaution.
One day later I received a call: 'We've been faxed a whole bunch of documents that are lying here. Do they belong to you?' THANK YOU!
A company that owes me R8000 has been in default for 18 months, yet my attorneys say they cannot be forced to pay me because the assets of the company are in the name of another, so effectively the Trust I'm suing is a 'Straw Man'. WONDERFUL!
When you add all of this up it starts to make one feel a little bit sick. I begin to feel agrophobia...a fear of walking out the door in the morning. Which person is going to promise me something then disappear in mysterious circumstances?
Why?
Why indeed? Is it just bad luck, bad karma? God maybe putting his foot down?I think the answer is that many 'useless people' are in jobs everywhere, and I think the reason they are useless is they see a phone call, or an instruction, as an irritation. So you could say:
"You complete me," or: "You irritate me."
Making My Day, Punk
Day to day, the mob go to work disconnected and unhappy. They don't understand work ethic, they're not pursuing personal goals (just someone elses)they have no goals of their own, but they're motivated by immediate gratification.
They'll tell you they'd rather be doing something else (they're not sure what, but they can be relied on doing the next thing just as badly).
These desk slouchers and corridor layabouts are all about time wasting, and finishing work early so as to watch Idols and chow something at McDonalds.
The world isn't real to them, it's just a sort of robotic dance through the week, junk food and movies on weekends. Then there's the moAning and whining afterwards, and the blame game. YOU WIN!
The useless lot who live these lives of quiet purposelessness, who become increasingly lazy with the few details entrusted to them, who see their jobs as 'a waste of time' have no motivation to be involved enough so as to not waste other people's time. Why should they, they are wasting their own time working in jobs that have no meaning for them.
Soup of the Day
This Lose/Lose mentality benefits no one, except, perhaps, Satan. What it does is extremely harmful. It inculcates a lack of trust in others, an overall lack of urgency, and worst of all, could lead to nuclear holocaust.
But entropy is the soup of the day, every day, and some languish in it, especially when it appears to be chicken soup (for the soul!).
People in general and South Africans in particular need to learn to be able to trust one another, in the streets ("Hi, I'll be your hijacker today")and when it comes do doing the job. But trust is earned, and I suppose it starts with being trustworthy oneself. Put that down.
It's too bad. I don't see that happening. But on the bright side, my cellphone bill for November ought to be R300 or less. Thanks Vodacom, you rock!
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