With internet reception being unreliable in the Cederberg area, Michael Stephenson opted to have Vox Telecom install a satellite connection at his farm. But he cancelled that contract in November 2024 due to very slow internet speeds. In the next six months he emailed the company four times to ask it to collect its satellite dishes and other hardware. Having not received a single response, he sent them to an auction house for sale. Then in October – almost a year after his contract was cancelled – Vox debited Stephenson’s bank account for about R14 000, and when his bank reversed the transaction, the company began sending him aggressive payment demands. The company agreed to waive “the hardware fees” after Wendy Knowler took up the case.

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“Oh what a miserable story.” That was how Citrusdal farmer Michael Stephenson described his Vox Telecom saga in his recent email to me.

It began when he contracted with the company to supply a satellite connection to his farm, given that conventional WiFi is “tricky” in that area.

“But the speeds from the satellite system Vox installed were so slow that the system was un-usable,” he said.

Getting the company to cancel the contract without him having to pay a penalty was “a long and truly miserable experience” on its own, he said, but he finally achieved that in November 2024.

“They refunded me the balance of my last month’s fee, and to my mind the contract was truly concluded, and I was deeply relieved,” he said.

But the satellite dishes and other hardware remained on the farm, and he was very keen to be rid of them.

“In the course of more than six months I sent them four emails, asking them to collect their dishes, but I got no response at all,” he said. There was nothing to indicate that the emails had not been successfully delivered, he said.

So he concluded that Vox had no intention of retrieving its property and, having no place to store them, he sent them to an auction house for sale. That was in June 2025.

Four months later – almost a year since his contract was cancelled – Vox debited his bank account in the amount of about R14 000.

“Thankfully my bank reversed it, but since then, Vox’s demands for payment – for more than R16 000 now - have become ever more aggressive.”

To make matters worse, the auctioneers had failed to pay him the proceeds of the sale of those satellite dishes.

“We entered the goods in the name of our farm, and my farm manager has phoned them about 50 times for details of the auction sale and payment, to no avail.”

In taking up Stephenson’s case with Vox Telecom, I said that given that he had repeatedly over the course of six months asked the company to collect the dishes and received no response whatsoever, it could be argued that it was reasonable for him to deduce that Vox had no intention to collect them.

“How then, does Vox justify demanding payment for him now?” I asked. “The contract was cancelled in November 2024 - that would have been the time for Vox to make mention of the dishes and its plans to uplift them.“

In light of the circumstances of Stephenson’s case, I said, was Vox prepared to write off the amount now being claimed for the hardware?

In its response to me earlier this week, Vox management said it had agreed to “ex gratia waiver the hardware fees to settle the matter with the customer amicably”.

But the saga was not quite over.

The day after that fee waiver news, Stephenson received yet another payment demand for payment.

Happily the company apologised, saying it was sent “in error”.