This is for the “little people”: the private individuals who have been ripped off, browbeaten, bullied, intimidated, leaned on, lied to, shaken down and betrayed by Vodacom.
One of the hot topics when I was at law school, was consumer protection: previously, the law worked on the assumption that when two people enter into a contract, they have equal bargaining power and therefore bargain as equals: but when one of the “parties” is a legal persona, a multinational corporation with endless resources and a whole range of skills at it’s disposal – and the law creates a legal fiction that the corporation is a “person” – you have a manifestly unfair situation. Big businesses take advantage of this situation shamelessly, and their attitude is always, “take it or leave it”. All their marketing, all their salesmanship, all their public utterances, are focused on trying to persuade their potential customers that they are open to negotiate – but of course they aren’t. Take it or leave it. “We are the caring company”, they say – but they lie.
The principal of consumer protection is about fifty years old, and it is honoured to a greater or lesser extent in different parts of the world. But of course, big business is very different from big charity and big businesses constantly tries to push their boundaries. That’s just the way capitalism works. And this is South Africa – a thugtocracy.
And on the other hand, it is up to us little people to figure out ways to push back in order to defend ourselves, or we just get ridden over. It’s also capitalism - just the other side of the same coin in the previous paragraph.
The difference is that the company is made up of many people all working together as a well-oiled machine: the customer on the other side does not develop a common strategy with other customers – he operates alone. So the company can have it’s way with him and he has little in the way of resources with which to push back. Each customer feels that he is alone in his fight, and the big corporations know that “the little men” feel like that, and they take advantage of that too.
There are consumer groups but they are few and far between – and some of them are just big corporations disguised as private individuals. Beware the wolves!
Phew! That was a long introduction! This is my story, and after that is what I’m doing about it.
Cellphones got to SA in about 1990. I was a junior partner in a stuffy old law firm where the average age of the senior partners was about 65. They regarded new technology with huge suspicion – and when a “new thing” arrived, they would sit around with gloomy faces and tell each other how it was going to fail.
(For example when fax machines arrived, a few years earlier, we DIDN’T buy one: when we eventually did, it was set up in the office of the senior partner’s secretary because everything was sorted by seniority, which usually meant age – but in a world of technology, age is NOT an advantage. She looked at it as if someone had brought a tarantula into her office; And when word-processors arrived, the MOST SENIOR SECRETARIES – the people who were least educable in new technology – got them first.
I was the most junior partner (it was a firm of Jewish lawyers so in Yiddish I was “the pisher” – a babe in nappies – there was a gap of 20 years between me and the next-oldest partner) so no-one was going to listen to me!
So when a a friend of our MOST SENIOR PARTNER came to him and said, “I’m thinking of starting an insurance company – will you join me?” my most senior partner said to him “it’ll never work.” The man was Donny Gordon, and the company was Liberty Life.
And when the City announced that they were planning to build a retail commercial centre at “the docks”, I remember as clear as if it was yesterday how one of my partners leaned back in his chair and said (and these were his exact words): “Ah, I can just see it now: a fine Cape rain drizzling down, and not a customer in sight!”
And Professor Brian Kantor of UCT excitedly announced it as the most brilliant idea of the century. Which it became!
So when cellphones arrived in 1990, of course, we didn’t get them. They were just a gimmick, we were told. In order to report the day’s property registrations from the Deeds Office, I had to join the queue of conveyancers at the Deeds Office tickey box and wait for my turn. But there was strenuous competition to report the registrations before the other law firms because the prestige and competence of your firm hung in the balance and it drove me mad. If only we had our own phone, we could beat that queue hands down, I thought.
One morning I had just had it up to my eyeballs and I was fuming as I marched back to the office. And that was the day that the mouse finally roared. “I’ve had it with you buggers!” I yelled at them “You’re pathetic! I want a phone! Today!”
And I got it. That very day. But there were strings attached. It was the Senior Partners phone – but I could borrow it for the Deeds Office run in the mornings. He never used it, of course. He just carried it around in his pocket like a trophy. But that phone was as big and heavy as a brick and it distorted the shape of his jacket. I knew that he hated it but there was no way that he was going to admit that. And then one morning not long after that I burst into the office of one of the other partners (technically, my boss, although it would have beneath us to talk like that) – and there he was, surreptitiously whispering into the cutest little cellphone I had ever seen … well, my goodness, that was a revelation!
I could understand the temptation – that guy was terribly status-conscious. He was a little irritated by me because I had more university degrees than he did, and I knew that it cranked him, so I played it up. But he’d figured something out – THE CELLPHONE was a status thing, and the cuter the phone, the better (please don’t tell me that you didn’t know that grown adult men – lawyers, nogal – aren’t basically 5-years-old at heart – more or less like the secret desire to be a fireman, or a policeman, or a pilot. Just watch them in court. The things they say when they’re under pressure! They complain to the judge like kids complaining to their mother! Its bloody hilarious!)
At that point, the resistance against cellphones crumbled like the Berlin wall. We had to adopt a “policy”: The firm would supply the phones and pay for the calls. They all came from the same supplier, the numbers were consecutive, and everyone brandished a phone like a sword. What fun! And with cellphones come a whole bunch of fun. You can lie like a fisherman: say you’re in a meeting when you’re not; tell your wife that you’re in the office when you’re – er – somewhere else. A whole new series of jokes arrived with cellphones:
Lawyers tell their wives they’re in office when they’re with their mistresses;
Accountants tell their mistresses they’re in office when they’re with their wives;
Actuaries lie to their wives and their mistresses when they’re in their offices. à etc.
And have you noticed that today cellphones are virtually characters in their own right in movies? – If you haven’t seen the movie “Her”, then you should. It takes the concept to its logical conclusion. For now. But I’m sure there’ll be greater extremes in the future. And even when it doesn’t go that far, the cellphone is virtually an extension of every actor’s arm.
But cellphones brought their own kind of legal brutality: highly desirable pretty shiny things with their own status appeal, plus all the really useful things that they can do, plus all the necessary things that they can do – they overcame price resistance easily. The public would rationalize the cost at almost any price. Humanity practically sold the phones to themselves. And the cellphone companies made it easy – regardless of how brilliant the technical know-how of the phones was, they were practically given away to an eager public.
Why? – Because the real product isn’t the phone: the real product is the calls and data flow which the phones carry. Once the infrastructure is set up, it takes relatively little to maintain, and the income from the service is a gift that just keeps on giving – to the phone company. There are about four cellphone companies in South Africa. And we all use (at least) one of them. And we, the little people with our little phones – we are their wealth.
But if you look at this from the point of view of the cellphone company, the business has big risks: the customer can run away with the phone, he can duck his bills and change his address without notice, he can change cellphone companies … so the cellphone company builds in mechanisms (legal and physical) to protect itself. And more protections. And more protections. Some of these things are legally permissible, some aren’t, and some are downright illegal, but catching the company is difficult. Just go to https://www.hellopeter.com and look up Vodacom. There were, at last count, 106,979 reviews for Vodacom – virtually all seriously damning. And their TrustIndex score is 2.4.
What is a TrustIndex score? – It’s a score between 0 and 10, where 10 is the highest possible value and (thus sayeth the Hellopeter website) that is the score that you/your business should aim towards. “It’s a Hellopeter metric that speaks to customer service, and easily communicates this to the Hellopeter community. We (Hellopeter) use your TrustIndex score to rank your business in your industry.”
Do Vodacom care? – No, not at all. Why should they? You’re just one of the little people – and what’s more, the other 106,978 complainers are also just little people. In other words, to hell with you. Just shut up and pay your bills!
And indeed, what is so wrong about that?
Well, I’ll tell you what’s wrong.
I signed my Vodacom contract in 1990. I’ve always been a spoiled brat and an advantage-taker par excellence, so I signed an expensive contract, collected an expensive phone, and went back to office with my trophy. Then every two years I got the latest phone and the firm blithely paid my crushing phone bills.
Then in 2016 I left my job and went into retirement for 3 years and suddenly money became an issue so I cast around for ways to save. I discovered that I could get a MUCH cheaper phone deal from Telkom and decided to cancel my Vodacom contract and port my number to Telkom.
And then the fun began.
Bear in mind that cellphone contracts are paid by debit order, so the company effectively has you by the curlies unless and until they decide to let you go.
There is a cancellation procedure. The rules are a bit opaque because they’re hoping that you’ll give up and stay with them but with patience you can work your way through the maze. Or so I thought. I signed the papers and submitted them and paid what I was told was the cancellation balance. And my number was ported to Telkom, which to my mind said that I was done with Vodacom.
But at the end of that month my Vodacom debit order went through again. “That’s odd”, I thought, but I’m a tolerant fellow, so I said to myself, well, that must be the last debit order (over and above the cancellation balance which I’d already paid).
The following month it went through again. “Hang on” I said to myself “somethings wrong here”
Now please understand that getting to Vodacom’s call centre is a mission of note – they’d much rather not talk to you – they know that if you’re calling, you’re going to ask for something. But if you persevere, you’ll get through. But that’s not much good unless you can put your message across, so you try. Then you get cut off, so you try again. Different assistant, same IQ. She listens sympathetically, asks for all sorts of information which is already on her screen, and says she’ll call you back.
You know she’s not going to call you back. And she doesn’t. And another debit order slips through.
I called my bank and poured out my heart. “Did you know that you can countermand a debit order payment?” She asks. Damn! I didn’t know that! “All you have to do is keep an eye out and as soon as the debit order goes through, call me, give me a reason to countermand it, and I will!” Well, well, well! The rules had changed – probably part of the “consumer protection” philosophy.
Woohoo! Salvation! I thought.
You see, the only way to get Vodacom to sit up and listen is to cut off their oxygen supply. Don’t pay the bastards!
So for three months I persistently countermanded payments.
Then I started getting threatening letters. I didn’t throw them away, I filed them. Then I got letters from some Joburg law firm threatening to sue me. I filed those too.
Meanwhile the amount they were claiming, climbed steadily. I watched in horror and fascination. As a lawyer myself I know that no businessman in his right mind will actually issue summons for a claim of less than, say, R15 000,00 because costs-wise it’s just not viable – but we were now well past that, so I waited to see what would happen.
Then I started to get calls and letters from their “lawyer”. Then some guy with a brain called me and I told him my story. “I’ll get back to you” he said. I’d heard that somewhere before. Of course he didn’t.
Then I got the next month’s bill and I was shocked to see that now they were only claiming R3 000,00! The rest of the claim had evaporated! So, I called them again (it takes about a morning to do this)
“Do you mean to say that if I pay this, and I tell you that I’m paying it in full and final settlement, and if I write to you to confirm that, it will be the end of the story?”
“Absolutely” said the confidence trickster at the other end.
“Then I’ll do it right now. It’s worth it!” said I.
So she gave me the call reference for our call, I paid the money, and I sent her an email referring to the call reference and including proof of payment and I confirmed that this was a payment “in full and final settlement” – the magic words.
At the end of the next month another debit order went through, and I had to countermand that too (I have to tell you, there’s a charge for countermanding these things and it ain’t cheap) – but now I was really pissed off. When the next inevitable threatening call came through, I said unspeakable things in many languages. For the first time, they put the phone down on me.
Then the debit orders stopped.
Then I started to get smses and emails and voice messages. Then I got hard-copy letters which tried to look like summonses. Three years went by and their claim has now prescribed. Then a few weeks ago I started to get calls again.
“Sue me!” I pleaded. “Please, please, please sue me! I want you to take me to court so that I can make arseholes out of you! And I want to claim massive legal costs from you! There’s a Japanese restaurant especially for lawyers in Johannesburg and I want to take you there for lunch – it’s called SoSumi! Sooooooo meeeee!”
Once again, I was cut off. I was really into this now, and I get it, and I’m telling y’all this because you need to know how to deal with these bastards and I’m learning.
By the end of last week I was getting five calls a day – I kid you not – 5 calls! And every time they call, the call comes from a different number, and I block that number. Every now and then a call gets through but as soon as a voice says, “Hello, how are you?” I know it’s Vodacom and I cut the call and immediately block the number. I have many blocked numbers, all one or two digits apart.
Sometimes they just ping my phone, probably just to establish if my number is still live. It only rings once and then cuts off. If I call that number back I get a message saying that that number doesn’t exist.
I could change my number, but that’s boring. And it’d mean they’ve won. This is so much more fun. This is a war of attrition. Or a battle of nerves. They have endless resources and I have endless patience. It’s so much fun.
One last anecdote (I’m addicted to anecdotes):
I handled my late mother’s deceased estate. Some years after she died, I got a telephone call from Edgars (just like that, out of the blue), asking to speak to her.
“Not any more” I said, “She’s dead. Her estate was finalised years ago.”
“Well, can you let me have a forwarding address for her, please?”
I was a little surprised.
“Certainly” I said, “its plot 941, Pinelands Jewish Cemetery No.2”
“Thank you”, said the polite little voice.
And then I replaced the receiver and went for lunch.
© Harry Friedland
“Read more on my blog: "Marimba"”
June 2020
THE VODACOM WARS (Part 2)
I've written about this before, both here and on Facebook. This is my latest move - I want to approach Devi Sankaree Govender of ENCA. I don't know is she'll listen to me, but here's my letter to her:
Extra-judicial debt collecting: Vodacom and VVM debt collectors
people do indeed pay attention to you.
conveyancer, mostly as a director at a Cape law firm going by the name of
Friedlander Shandling Volks and when that firm amalgamated with Smith Tabata
Buchanan Boyes, then under the name of the latter firm.
took contracts with Vodacom, and stayed with Vodacom throughout. But I was
boarded in 2016 and by 2019 I was looking for ways to economise on my lifestyle,
one of my strategies being to seek a cheaper cellphone package.
their website (several times), but just couldn't shake them. It appears that
Vodacom generally doesn't conduct business in writing, and barring in one
relatively insignificant instance, everything had to be done telephonically, which
involves long holding times, dropped calls, cut-off calls, conversations with people
who could barely understand English (and had greater difficulty in speaking it).
This was a formidable ordeal.
toTelkom for a phone package which cost a mere fraction of the Vodacom
contract charge. One might have thought that porting the number would signal to
Vodacom that whether the contract was lawfully terminated or not, I was no
longer their customer which meant whatever else they might or might not do, they
react at all.
when taking out a contract: I was taught that only a creditor could stop a debit
order and that a debtor was at the creditor's mercy in that regard. But I spoke to
debit order reversed in cases where the debit order paid out without just cause.
All you had to do was wait for the debit order to go through, then call your bank
and tell them that the debit order was unjustified and they would reverse it.
forced to pay a much greater sum of money that you do not owe.
his payment up to date or to invite him to make an arrangement in the case of financial
difficulty. Vodacom did not do that.
department (for the umpteenth time). This time, I got through to a person with a brain, and he
went to some trouble to investigate the history of the matter and eventually came back to say
that he could see that someone else in the organisation had started the cancellation procedure
(a long, long time ago) but had not completed it, for reasons unknown. He undertook to see
that it was done. Naturally, I requested, received and noted the call reference.
R10 000,00 monthly. This has gone on for about two and a half years now. By November this
year, all their claims will have prescribed, regardless of the amount. I am counting the days.
telephone calls a day, mostly from a crowd called "VVM" (Van De Venter Mojapelo Inc)
(https://www.vvm.co.za/)" debt collectors. (If you want to know more about VVM just input
their name in Google or go straight to Hellopeter). They call from different numbers in Gauteng:
and every time they call, I block the number - but I know that this is a futile exercise because
they seem to have an unlimited number of calling numbers. Cleverly, they don't call themselves
attorneys, but they do their best to bring you under the impression that they are a law firm.
Page 1 of their website brags like this:
85Mil
OUTBOUND CALLS IN
IN THE LAST YEAR
38Mil
SMS INTERACTIONS IN
THE LAST YEAR
"dirty tricks" which would get a lawyer struck off the roll.
second, which is quite breathtaking (Incidentally, I have had three calls so far while typing this
email). Their company is basically a call centre, with hundreds of employees who spend their
days calling people, giving and receiving abuse. What a way to earn a living! I wonder what that
does to their minds and what their home lives are like ....
justify the cost of issuing a summons - and if they did issue a summons, it would definitely not
justify the cost of litigation beyond that point. On the one or two occasions when I actually
wasn't thinking and took their calls, I begged them to sue me but I know that they will never do
that.
"debtors", but victims) to death. They wage a war of attrition against them. It is absolutely
unnerving. Your phone rings constantly. You get three different kinds of calls:
your account is in arrears and supplies you with a balance which is allegedly payable. I have
said some terrible things to these poor people;
(2) "Silent" calls where an unidentified number calls, but hangs up as soon as you answer; and
(3) "Wrong number" calls. I can't be certain that these are the result of something that
Vodacom does, but it started happening to me at the exact the same time as I began to be
inundated with (1) and (2) above. Ordinary people call, looking for government departments
etc - I've also had three of those today.
on his phone, but it's possible), or you can go off the grid (not a proposition for me), or you can
emigrate (if you emigrate, it simply stops the clock on prescription - which cannot run while
you are out of the country - but it restarts the clock when you re-enter the country).
debtors and to bring a class action in the High Court in an application for a very old remedy
known as an "Edict of Perpetual Silence". It is still very much part of our law, but it's a High
Court action and they will fight it tooth and nail because if successful it will shut their
business down. But its prohibitively expensive for a private person to litigate in an opposed
action in the High Court. Hence the idea of a class action, which would enable a large group
of people to fundraise for the action at relatively little individual expense.
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