How to hit where it hurts

The problem we all know about is that Telkom is a monopoly, and unfortunately no matter how much people rant and rave at them, they will ignore you.
We in our office are beginning to rustle up the email addresses of all interested media people, as well as those who might issue a legal opinion on the merits of Telkom offering this service to new clients, as well as taking the money from suckers like us!

Hi Pretext

Great news that somebody else is also taking some action. The best of luck with the media. We are also using that avenue, and the more they hear about it the better!

It is true that simply contacting Telkom and complaining will not do much good. For too long they got used to simply ‘binning’ complaints. After all, what can you do? We are considering various other forms of action forcing Telkom to react. Last resorts include legal action and withholding payment from a big group of customers. But we would like to play by the book, and ensure that our supporters will never be harmed…ie, in the case of withholding payment, we must first ensure that Telkom does not legally have the right to cut services. This will all take a great deal of time and finances, and we just hope that Telkom starts to react when they see that we have moved beyond just phoning that trusted old 0800 375 375 and crying in the ear of an underpaid telephone operator.

Thanks for your postings. Much appreciated.

Regards,

RPM


RPM
[email protected]

legaly you have no right to do anything, especialy hold back payment

your connection speed and reliability was never guaranteed and you are not contractualy bound to useing the service, you can cancel it at any time.

What Karnaugh said. The only way Telkom is ever going to do anything that benefits the customer is if they have competition.

mithrandi

Hi Karnaugh and Mithrandi

Thanks for the postings.

It is true that competition in South Africa will be great, but that is a luxury that has been promised to us since its monopoly expired on 7 May 2002. And even then it is rather strange that Telkom will own 30% of its competition. But whatever the case might be, I can’t see this happening soon. This is the reason for this site. We are investigating all legal avenues open to us.

I am not certain what we are entitled to within the law, but we will definitely investigate it. We obviously hope that Telkom will react positively to this forum and the wishes of ADSL users here if it represents many users, but I am not certain that this will be the case. If they simply refuse to hear what users have to say, we will opt for an option that makes life less comfortable for them. This can be achieved in a variety of ways, not only withholding payment.

Previously I was successful in forcing ABSA to pay in money for their mistakes, and even give me interest on this money they had to repaid. Initially they told my they will fix the mistakes, but will not pay for my costs (transport, personal costs incurred etc.). After one week I received a letter apologizing for their mistakes, informing me that they will cover all my costs, including interest. Just have to pull the right strings. As you might guess, I hate bad service, and this is the reason why we opened this site.

The battle with Telkom is not going to be easy, but it is worth a shot. And it costs none of the users anything (except us of course . I just don’t like complaining while sitting back and doing nothing. That is the reason why Telkom feel they can sell us short…they never meet any resistance. I hope it ends here!

Regards,

Rudolph


RPM
[email protected]

Karnaugh, you are correct in saying that Telkom doesn't guarantee reliability and speed in their fine print, but if they are seen to be selling the service to new clients and continuing to take money fron existing subscribers when knowingly providing a service which, quite frankly, we all can see is a joke (both in terms of experience and simple arithmetic), then whatever fine print etc. exists, the law WILL fall onto the subscribers side. Class action I say!


<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Karnaugh</i>
<br />legaly you have no right to do anything, especialy hold back payment

your connection speed and reliability was never guaranteed and you are not contractualy bound to useing the service, you can cancel it at any time.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Pity we can't get some TV channel to do a stint about this ... like that Isabela Jones thing where she would take complaints and hound the culprit and publicly expose them.

Try sell it as a 'TELKOM HINDERS GROWTH IN AFRICA' story.

Well its deeper than that actualy. Yes, Telkom extorts the public but only because they can..

The government might actualy start acting in the intrests of the public some day and make it a free market, but they just like Telkom want more money.

On principle, the only legal action against Telkom that I would support would be wrt to revoking their monopoly situation in a free market way (not the current !@$# we're going through, with government interfering at every step of the way). In all other cases, if you don't like it, don't use it; or use it, and complain about it, or whatever; just keep the legal system out of it.

mithrandi

Hi Mithrandi

I hope we can achieve a better service without having to take too much action. I don’t think this kind of site existed previously, and Telkom’s response will be most interesting. After we have a decent amount of members and enough action going we will engage in discussions about these complaints with Telkom. One thing I will not appreciate is if the simply do nothing about our complaints. I will then consider other strategies, like the media etc.

Believe me that we would indeed like to avoid any form of legal action. We fund the project personally, and will never ask the users for anything…we try to be noble And I am not certain if we will achieve anything by it. But it will remain some form of last resort. Maybe they react to some form a legal intervention… But this is not necessarily simply a court case. We may involve the South African Telecommunications Regulations Authority or try to achieve something through the ministry. The basic idea is simply to let Telkom know they cannot get away (not easily at least) with this kind of service!

Regards,

RPM


RPM
[email protected]

Man oh man, i can't believe what i'm seeing. Before i post what i believe let me just say this, i wish ADSL was cheaper, i wish it was a better service and i can't wait untill an affordable broadband solution is in place.

You people are mad in the head if you think telkom are gonna give a second look at this bunch of childish ramblings. You pay roughly R800p/m for a dedicated service and expect the quality and bandwidth of a R20000 service. Lets get a few facts straight here

1. International bandwidth costs in the region of R6000-R10000 (dependant on provider obviously) per 64k segment (this is on fibre, i don't know what the cost on satelite is). You guys are paying what ?? R200 ISP fees, and you want 512k's worth of bandwidth permanantly !!!! Come on, you do the math.

2. Telkom do not force you to buy adsl, they have other alternates, eg. ISDN, Diginet etc. etc. etc.. Yes these are more expenisve or less effective but it's there. With diginet you get your guarentees.

3. Business clients pay HUGE amounts of money for dedicated bandwidth, Telkom have to abide to the guarantees they supply.

4. DSL is so cheap in the US and EU because our international is thier LOCAL. They don't need huge fibre lines and satelite to communicate. Imagine how many South Africans access european and american services on a daily basis and then think how many americans need to use south african services !!!!

5. Telkom know the minute they release the caps users will abuse the bandwidth they have, we also know this is true

The biggest problem with ZA is the distance from the rest of the connected world, we unfortunately need huge fibre lines and satelite to communicate with the rest of the world, these technologies cost telkom and other companies huge amounts of money to implement. You cannot expect telkom to offer a service at such a low price when it is costing them an arm and a leg !

I know i may sound very negative but thats unfortunately the way it is, i work with this stuff every day. I wish it were different, i sit at home with ISDN at the moment and will probably switch over to ADSL at the end of this year for fixed costs. My main aim here was to try and make more people understand why the service is the way it is.

I never expected to have the full ADSL speed all the time (internationally) ... I was fully aware there was a cap..I was aware it effected my international connection... what I didn't know that the international bandwidth is remarkably <b>slower</b> than my old 56k modem was. If the international bandwidth provided me with same speed as my old modem and allowed me to continue downloading from Kazaa at the same steady pace my old modem used to I would be perfectly happy.

I wanted a 24/7 connection without the variable telephone bills with at least the same speed as my modem was providing. I considered the 3 gigs at ADSL speed like a primetime window...and I would use the local ADSL speed for gaming at SGS (SAIX Gaming Servers).

Hi,

We host a xDSL channel on irc and promoting this site to everyone on both there, and other channels we know where DSL users exist. There are only about 40 people on DSL we have so far, but it's certainly a start. You should see votes going up, as I'm sure you're aware, this is certinaly supposed to be a service to us, and not by any means a hinderance.

I hope this site takes us where we all wish to be.

All the best,

syntaX

This was a fun read. Early Throw back Thursday

The only thing I want to see away with is that voice portion of the adsl. Ie naked adsl. I know it's a requirement, but in this day an age, we should have found a better solution to have just the adsl bit and not be forced to have voice. Many people make use of the voice, but many don't, so paying for something which they Kind of not making full use of. Whether that is up the user is another matter, but it's one area which is a bit crap.

Legally Telkom can be challenged for a sub standard service, even if their terms and conditions says that they can't guarantee you the speed you paid for. If you pay for a 4mb line, then you should sure as hell need to get as close to that as possible. And if not, then Telkom as the service provider need to find a way or ways to manage or upgrade their infrastructure.

It's a tough one, especially with only Telkom around, so nowhere else really for anybody to run to.