Warning to any future customers!

I have just received the most horrible and soulless service you can imagine from Sos Prepaid Solutions. Let me take you through my experience...

Yesterday I settled my account with Sos Prepaid Solutions, since they threatened to turn off my power the day after if I hadn’t paid by then. Even though my payment was only 9 days late and I have never missed a payment with them before. My payment was late because of some bad financial circumstances, and I basically had to beg my parents for money to be able to pay. Believing the matter taken care of I continued... that is until today.

Suddenly my power goes off, and that is a specific problem for me for two reasons. Firstly, I work from home as a developer, so no power no work. Secondly and much more importantly, I have a three-month-old son, and I can't sterilize his bottle or heat up the water for his milk without electricity. So, I start to panic, right before a letter is slipped under my door with the obvious fine and so forth. So I quickly run to my door, calling after whoever must have just dropped the letter to please wait as I simply have a question (my account is already paid and so I would have simply liked to know how the matter could be resolved quickly, baby and all). Nevertheless, whoever it was must have made a break for it with quite a bit of speed, as when I came running out the door there was no one to be seen and calling into the distance had no effect. This sets the tone for the rest of the story.

So, I immediately call their office and ask for assistance. This is when I started talking to Ms. X and started receiving maybe the worst service one could imagine in this situation. I started explaining my situation as calmly as I could considering how much I was panicking. Telling her that my power was just switched off even though I had settled my account in full the day before. She then started telling me how they had not yet received any payment (she said this instantly, she did not check their system), and how my account has been due since 1st of the month. I then apologized for not settling my account, and explained my financial problems, even going as far as to mention the detail about my parents so that she could understand how desperate my situation was. It was at this point that I also mentioned that I please need her help as quickly as possible because of my son and not being able to feed him without electricity. She then said that I would need to send her proof of payment and reminded me that my account has been due since the 1st, continuing in her insulting tone of contempt that she had since the beginning of the conversation. I then said that I would do so immediately but asked her to please contact her engineer and have him stay close to the premises. She then flat out refused to do this, saying that if there was still someone in the area when she received the proof, she would contact them, otherwise they would send someone at a later occasion. Seriously... after I just told you I need electricity to feed my baby and my account is settled?... I ended the call at this point.

I did however immediately email through the proof of payment. After about ten minutes of not hearing back from them, I called again. I asked for Ms. X and was put through to her. I then asked her if she had received the proof. She said that she had received my email, but that the file was still downloading (the file was 0.4mb in size) and that it would still take a while. I told her that I would hold the line while it was downloading, knowing that it couldn't possibly take long to complete. She then tried to get rid of me, saying that she would call me back when it was finished. When I insisted however she put the phone down next to her and ignored me.

When I then called back five minutes later and asked for Ms. X again, she was suddenly unavailable. I then asked for the manager, who was apparently in a meeting at the time. Strange how managers are always in meetings when you have complaints. I then left my contact details and asked for the manager to call me back as quickly as possible and explained the urgency of the situation yet again, as well as that I wanted to make a complaint about Ms. X. It is now the day after the incident, and I have yet to hear back from any manager or receive a call back from anyone at all. I then called back every 10 minutes or so each time trying to get hold of either Ms. X or the manager, the employees playing hot potato with the phone. I talked to quite a few people but neither Ms. X nor the manager was ever available.

My power was eventually restored almost two hours after it was originally turned off. Probably to keep a review like this from being posted. However, I simply couldn't let service this bad just go by without saying anything.