When a con is just a phone call away

Listening to recordings of calls featuring cellphone telesales agents getting people to agree to a contract is not good for my blood pressure.

Granted, the ones I get to hear are always the dodgy ones.

Clearly, not all the sales agents are willing to fudge the truth to get a sale — and the commission that goes with it — but even when they play by the rules, the process is inherently prejudicial to consumers.

The ambush call, for starters: why wait for your customer to go to a store when they're good and ready to enter into a contract, when you can call them out of the blue and hit them with a slickly worded sales pitch in the hopes of getting them locked in early, or to an extra contract?

So what if, at the end of the call, the customer isn’t entirely sure of the terms they agreed to because the telemarketing company is not obliged to share the call recording or a transcript of the call? And who cares if both telemarking company and cellphone network makes them jump through hoops to get access to it?

Not all sales agents are willing to fudge the truth to get a sale — but even when they play by the rules, the process is inherently prejudicial to consumers

Not the industry, clearly.

I thought I knew all the creative ways in which people flogging cellphone contracts over the phone dupe people,  but as it turns out, I’d missed one.

This one only works if the subscriber who’s called out of the blue by a cellphone telesales agent is not absolutely sure of what they’re currently paying on their contracts.

Those who have more than one contract linked to their account would be less likely to know the individual contract amounts, given that their debit order is the sum of those separate amounts.

Jeanne Bonnema was phoned in July by an agent with Umhlanga-based Rewardsco, which describes itself on its website as “a leading provider of outsourced sales and distribution services in South Africa”.

The words that hit you as you land on its home page are: “We deliver lifetime value for businesses through transformational customer experiences that surprise and delight.”

Well, the surprise element for Bonnema was getting that sales call just eight months after she took out a 24-month SIM-only Vodacom contract.

Her daughter’s data contract, linked to her account, was signed just six months ago.

Having established that both Bonnema and her daughter’s needs were being met by their existing contracts, the agent nevertheless ploughed on with his sales pitch. Instead of the daughter’s data being 5GB during the day and 5GB at night, he said, she could have 10GB anytime data for the same price — R149 a month.

To Bonnema he offered double the talk minutes of her existing contract — having conceded that she never came close to using her allocation fully — plus a new phone.

She was very happy with the iPhone she’d bought for cash, she said. But he talked her into accepting that replacement contract with double the airtime minutes and a new phone.

“It’s not as nice as the iPhone but you can just keep it as a spare,” he told her.

She agreed because he assured her that her subscription fee would remain the same: R868.

Who could resist such a good deal?

Bonnema made a not-so-delightful discovery when she got her next cellphone bill — she owed quite a bit more than before.

So she queried it with Rewardsco.

“They said they would listen to the sales call and give me feedback.

“Eventually they let me know that the recording proved that I was in the wrong and that the bill was correct,” she said. “They did not want to send the recording to me, so I had to go into a Vodacom store to listen to it.

“When I got there, a kind agent in the store sent me the copy so that I could listen to it carefully.”

The injustice of the fact that the Consumer Protection Act does not require companies to provide their customers with recordings of these calls, given that they take the place of a written contract, drives me wild.

What Bonnema realised, when she was finally able to listen to that recording, was that the agent misled her with regard to what she was paying on both of her original contracts.

She had actually been paying R558 (not R868) on her contract and R92 (not R149) on her daughter’s.

The cellphone I was sent is still in its packaging, untouched. They can have it back

So she asked for my help.

“The cellphone I was sent is still in its packaging, untouched,” she said. “They can have it back.”

As I put it to Vodacom, most people, when getting such an unexpected sales call, would not have their billing information at hand, and would trust that the agent was telling them the truth.

Had Bonnema been given accurate information, she would most certainly not have agreed to either of those new contracts. So she wanted to be put back in the position she was before that Rewardsco agent called her back in July, and for the extra R357 she’d been paying since August to be refunded to her.

Responding, a Vodacom spokesperson said the company had started migrating both contracts to the original package, “which means Ms Bonnema will pay exactly what she paid before this recent upgrade”. 

And yes, she’s getting that refund.

Pressed for comment on the fact that Bonnema was misled by that agent, the spokesperson said: “We treat allegations that agents have misled or lied to customers very seriously and certainly do not condone behaviour of this nature. 

“We have strict service level agreements in place with agents and suppliers to prevent instances of this nature from occurring, including mechanisms to terminate agreements with agents and suppliers that are in breach.”

Vodacom jointly reviewed scripts and sample calls with the leadership team responsible for the campaigns at each of their business partners, she said.

“We will assess further improvements that can be made to the process.”

One such improvement would be to routinely provide subscribers who “sign up” over the phone with those call recordings, via e-mail or WhatsApp, well within their seven-day telesales “cooling off” period.

They wouldn’t dare withhold a paper contract from those who sign up in a store, so it’s outrageous that consumers have to beg for those call recordings.

• Contact Knowler for advice with your consumer issues via e-mail consumer@knowler.co.za or on X (Twitter) @wendyknowler