Cell C service is beyond shocking!

By Jay, on November 25th, 2011

Since Cell C released their Whoosh, I have always been a big fan and I’ve even written multiple reviews on this site endorsing their product. I’ve personally been responsible for more than 20 people buying their product and that’s not even counting the amount of people that have bought it after reading the reviews on this site (Over 5,000 people have read the reviews).

Well I’m sad to say that I no longer endorse their products and I strongly recommend you find another alternative. Their service has become absolutely shocking and their call center and stores need some serious work.

Here is why I’ve lost my cool with them.

In January this year I bought the 60GB speedstick and in fairness, to this day I have never had a problem with it. Since this awesome little device made my life so much easier, I decided to get my wife the 24GB speed stick just over 2 months ago and I’m regretting it ever since.

My wife went to the CellC branch in Northgate to get the speedstick and was told that their RICA machine was not working so she must come back the next day. They only had 1 speedstick in stock so my wife asked for them to keep it for her till the next day. The sales person said this would not be a problem.

The next day she went back to the shop at 10am to be told that they had sold it. The person who promised to keep it, just shrugged his shoulders and said “I can’t control everything here”. So my wife ended up driving to the Clearwater branch, guess what… also out of stock, so was Cresta and Fourways. So eventually I went to the Midrand branch to get one. My first complaint is not that so many of their branches were out of stock, although you would think they would look after their stock levels, my first complaint is the rudeness and useless service from the Northgate branch salesperson.

So I got the speedstick from Midrand and it was working fine for the first 2 1/2 weeks before the sim card is was rejected in the speedstick as well as in a phone (Yes I do test things before I call the help desk). I called the service desk and was informed that the SIM was faulty and I would need to take it to any Cell C store to have a sim swap done. So my wife went the following day to Northgate again (BIG mistake).

She was told that airtime needed to be loaded and there was nothing wrong with the sim card.. really?!?

So my wife called me from the store and passed her phone to the person ‘helping’ her at the store. I explained the story and explained that the sim doesn’t work if you put it in a phone and hence airtime was not the problem, I also explained that I had called the help desk the previous day and they had confirmed it was the sim that was faulty. The store still insisted that it was airtime and even got a little snotty with me on the phone. I made the person a deal…. top up the phone with HIS money, and if the problem went away I would pay him back double, if not, it’s his loss. You think he went for it? fat chance.

So he insisted that it was airtime, but was not willing to take me up on my offer, clearly he was not that convinced and then informed my wife that she needed to go to Checkers to get R5 airtime so he could fix the problem. YOU MUST BE JOKING?!?! This is a Cell C store, are you really telling me I have to go to Checkers to get airtime???

Needless to say, the airtime did NOT fix the problem. The person said “Oh, well that usually works” Could any more lies come out of these people’s mouths???? So they did a sim swap which is what we asked for in the first place and then proceeded to charge us R10 for this. The sim card is not even a MONTH old! So this exercise not only cost my wife’s time but this also cost R15 to sort out (I’m not moaning about the R15, I’m moaning about the principle, the waste of time and the absolutely shocking service)

So I decided I would complain to Cell C about the whole issue. So we all know we are supposed to “Tell Trevor” so I did, and I received an email just moments later saying they would look into it and get back to me. This was an automated reply, and I have not heard a thing from them since.

Just 2 weeks later, the speedstick stopped working again. This time it was not the sim card getting rejected, it just didn’t download anything. I called the help desk again and was informed that this time it was because I needed to load airtime (excuse me a for a second while I slam my head against a wall). So I asked why, apparently you have to top up with airtime to extend the “window”. This is when I totally lost it, I had paid UPFRONT for a FULL YEAR service of 2GB a month for 12 months. That means, it should work for a FULL YEAR. The person on the other side of the phone disagreed with me, to which I replied, then why is my other one still working? He had no answer but insisted that I needed to top up the airtime.

There is no chance in HELL I’m going to spend more money on this, when I’ve clearly paid for a Years service, the argument went on for over 20 minutes until eventually I just said, “You know what, don’t worry about it, I’ll just go to the ombudsman”. All of a sudden I’m transferred to a manager who assures me this will be resolved. My window was extended for a month until their accounts department would rectify this, I then received an email 2 weeks later saying that it has been fixed. I dialled 140 to see when my airtime window had been extended to and discovered it’s only been extended until the 20th June next year. So guess what this means… 21st of June, I’ll be calling the ombudsman to lay a complaint.

Cell C – You really need to get your act together. You had a person (me) that was promoting your products for you for over a year. I’ve been a happy customer for ages and brought you tons of business and this is how you repay me?!? I have noted the way you treat your nice customers and hence I’ve decided I don’t want to be a nice customer anymore.

P.S – This review was written on a friends computer because guess what… yip the speed stick is not working again. I’m not even going to waste my time explaining how wonderful the service was from the help desk.

P.P.S – If you work at Cell C, I might need to explain that in my PS, I’m being sarcastic about the “wonderful” service, it was shocking as usual.

City: ALL

Country: South Africa