Unisa runs student enquiries through one toll-free number and one online form, and the form is the part people get wrong. It routes by category, and picking the wrong one sends your question to a department that cannot answer it.
Unisa student enquiries
- Centralised toll-free number: 0800 00 1870
- Student Communication Centre hours: 08:00 to 19:00 Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 14:00 on Saturdays
- Misdirected enquiries and FAQs: [email protected]
- Fax: 012 429 4150
Note that the mailbox is labelled by Unisa for misdirected enquiries and FAQs — it is the catch-all, not the front door. The form below is the front door.
The form categories, and what belongs in each
- Applications and registrations — anything before you are a registered student for the current period.
- Assignments — submission, due dates, a mark that has not appeared.
- Examinations — venues, timetables, results, remarks and aegrotats.
- Study material — material not received or the wrong material sent.
- Student accounts — fees, statements, payments and refunds.
- myLife email — the student email account itself, including a lost password.
- myUnisa — the student portal.
There is also a category for a single module, EUP1501, which tells you how much volume that one module generates.
One enquiry at a time, and Unisa means it
The instruction on the form is explicit: send one enquiry per message, because otherwise there is confusion about who must respond and the whole message waits. A single email containing a fees question, an assignment question and an exam question will sit until somebody decides whose it is. Send three.
Saturday cover is real, and Saturday is quieter
The centre answers until 19:00 on weekdays and until 14:00 on Saturdays. Registration and exam periods make the weekday lines very busy; Saturday morning is genuinely worth trying if your question can wait a day.
Check the portal before you phone
Results, statements, exam timetables and study material tracking are all on my.unisa.ac.za, and the consultant will look at the same screen you can. Phone when the portal shows something wrong, not when you have not looked.
Regional centres
Unisa is a distance university, but it runs regional centres around the country with in-person support, and the corporate site lists them with directions and campus maps. For something that genuinely needs a counter — a document to be certified and submitted, an assignment to be handed in physically — find your regional centre rather than travelling to Pretoria.
The number is free, so nobody needs to charge you
0800 00 1870 is toll-free. Every year students are charged by people offering to register them, to secure a space or to fix a fee account. Unisa does not use agents for this, and a fee is paid to the university on banking details you obtain from the university itself. If you are stuck, the ombudsman is an internal route Unisa publishes and it costs nothing.