On the 22nd of October 2008 I lodged a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA) against Vodacom South Africa. I was under the impression that if you advertise a product or service as free and you then instead remove funds from your clients account that you are infact advertising falsely and or stealing the funds. (I seem to have been wrong.)
In an attempt to warn users of what I thought to be fraud, I also wrote a strongly worded blog post, after all isn’t that what “Mikey” taught us to do?. (here again I seem to have been in the wrong) The blog post was quickly picked up by the all seeing Google and for some reason shot straight to the top of Google when searching with the keywords “Vodacom SVS”. This was weird as my blog isn’t the most popular blog, in fact it is probably only read by about 2 people. The high Google rating caught the attention of a few individuals who apparently work for Vodacom and they viewed my blog as attack on the firm, instead of a warning to help users, as I had intended it to be. Their resultant online mud slinging and Argumentum ad hominem got quite nasty and even people I thought I knew bit me quite hard for my post.
In the long run though, no evidence was brought forward for bogus claims that I was a disgruntled employee and after along chat with Vodacom client services, (who btw are much more friendly and helping than those online “social” bulldogs) I could see that it was not Vodacoms intent to steal from me or other clients, the whole thing was a “huge big bugger up with the account system” and apparently I had over reacted. I therefore dropped the whole theft and fraud idea and updated my blog accordingly. I was also contacted again by the ever friendly Vodacom client care who assured me they had no hard feelings about my blog post and to rectify the error, I was refunded and an additional R15 per handset was paid back to me on top of the incorrectly removed funds, this I also blogged about.
The question that keeps coming to my mind, if the online social guys had responded in that same friendly manner as their offline people, would this whole thing not have been sorted out in the first few minutes, instead of the whole mud slinging episode?
Anyway eventually the whole issue died a slow death, Well almost, I still felt at the time that Vodacom had the obligation to inform users of the error and that they should have issued a press release to that effect. We all know things go wrong, and I thought it’s only decent to tell us if you take our funds by accident. (Well thats at least what I thought) You see I spend most of my time online in the “social world” where users and companies apologize when things go wrong but in reality, this is not how real world companies work 
To cut along story short, on 1 December 2008 I finally got a response from the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa and it turns out that I have no case, so yet again I seem to have been in the wrong. If a firm takes funds from your account by accident, they have no need to inform you of this error. A client who feels unhappy should shut his mouth and go log “a service related dispute” and as long as the firm rectifies the error, nothing can be done.
Lessons learned from this whole thing.
1. Going to the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa when you have a problem is a waste of time, by the time they respond you have long forgotten about the issue. Rather speak directly to the company involved and if they don’t give you service, just change the channel.
2. Taking on a huge firm can be very painful, no matter what you do or say you will always be in the wrong, and although you may have had good intentions it will never be viewed in this way. Although they may have “teething problems” you will feel the bite for a long time to come.
3. When funds get removed from your account without your permission, don’t jump up and down, rather take a deep breath, look left, look right and then just change the channel.
4. The cluetrain manifest has some very powerful wording, one thing I learned through this whole experience though is that this online “conversation” that we so often refer to, seems to be very one sided. If you speak out against a small stupid timeshare scam, you will be an online hero, if you speak out against a giant you will get stomped on. lol welcome to Web2.0 - Remind me next time to rant against the underdog and not the giant.
Anyway I am so glad this is over, time to relax and enjoy life (hopefully no hard feelings guys)
I look forward to seeing what other sexy new products Vodacom launches next.
Oh and btw if you havnt given Vodacom SVS a try, why not do it today, it really is a great service.
