Advice for dealing with Telkom

[ikkju_sojun]

story below. anyone have any advice for dealing with telkom?

story:

i took the 3 month free (hah!) service offer. it expired in April. i moved from Jhb to Pretoria at the same time, and in anticipation of that, i asked them to assess the exchange. they forgot.

late in april, i asked Telkom to move the line. again.

they failed to do that.

early in may, i asked again and the line was cancelled in Jhb and a new account created in Pta. of course, the new one was never installed.

mid-may, i asked them to send someone out. they eventually did. the person they sent out failed to get the line installed, but did manage to crash into my front gate and get their vehicle stuck between the gate and the intercom housing, both of which gouged holes in their van.

i called again. they visited again. on the second visit the person said that the cable was a problem and that the cable department had to be called out.

i called the cable department. they were obviously not very helpful.

time passed.

eventually, i called and was told that the cable department had been and gone. of course, nothing worked.

i called to get the line activated. i was told that they didn't work the hours that i did and that i should call another day. so i called another day.

more time passed.

it's coming up to the end of June. i have eventually had the line activated, but the internet connection stayed red - that is, either the account was not activated on the network, or the physical cable was not working.

i called again. music played. crickets chirped.

eventually i left a message to have the matter escalated. last night i got an sms, saying that everything was working.

obviously it's still not working.

interestingly, last night i also got a telkom SMS CLAIMING I AM IN ARREARS BY R200.00

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

so.


anyone have any ideas how i can get this fast tracked?


thanks.


associated reference numbers:

704CTK190612
875CTK180612

[yebocan]

story below. anyone have any advice for dealing with telkom?

story:

i took the 3 month free (hah!) service offer. it expired in April. i moved from Jhb to Pretoria at the same time, and in anticipation of that, i asked them to assess the exchange. they forgot.

late in april, i asked Telkom to move the line. again.

they failed to do that.

early in may, i asked again and the line was cancelled in Jhb and a new account created in Pta. of course, the new one was never installed.

mid-may, i asked them to send someone out. they eventually did. the person they sent out failed to get the line installed, but did manage to crash into my front gate and get their vehicle stuck between the gate and the intercom housing, both of which gouged holes in their van.

i called again. they visited again. on the second visit the person said that the cable was a problem and that the cable department had to be called out.

i called the cable department. they were obviously not very helpful.

time passed.

eventually, i called and was told that the cable department had been and gone. of course, nothing worked.

i called to get the line activated. i was told that they didn't work the hours that i did and that i should call another day. so i called another day.

more time passed.

it's coming up to the end of June. i have eventually had the line activated, but the internet connection stayed red - that is, either the account was not activated on the network, or the physical cable was not working.

i called again. music played. crickets chirped.

eventually i left a message to have the matter escalated. last night i got an sms, saying that everything was working.

obviously it's still not working.

interestingly, last night i also got a telkom SMS CLAIMING I AM IN ARREARS BY R200.00

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

so.


anyone have any ideas how i can get this fast tracked?


thanks.


associated reference numbers:

704CTK190612
875CTK180612

-good luck man....loads of patience....what I did when I got the pillar to post routine from Telkom, lodged a complaint with ICASA...-not fastest responds time, but when they eventual came around....they and Telkom got in contact with me,....methinks that would be your best bet....-good luck!

[ikkju_sojun]

thanks. i contacted ICASA. we'll see what comes of that.

i also posted on Hello Peter. twice. both times it was answered with a reference number and nothing else. no one called me and the problem - as at 30 June - is still not solved. the call center agent i eventually spoke to told me that someone called "Pam Pillay" had been making extensive notes on the case. apparently she has an extensive fantasy life and had been claiming to call me and write down the imaginary conversations every day. (you couldn't make this up.)

i did get a call, two days later from the second escalation, from a woman called Nomvubelo (?) who, while refusing to give me any details of who she was or what she did, claimed to want to "help me", if only I would let her. unfortunately, i was going into a meeting, but asked her to mail me. of course, nothing ever came of that.

eventually, i got a lady in escalations to plug away at the matter - she seems to as hamstrung as me, though. she organised for a technician to visit during the week, of which nothing came. she then organised for someone to visit me today (Saturday) at 11h00. of course, nothing came of that either - at 15h30, "Adam" called me to say that it was "now too late" to come around and good luck.

i cannot for the life of me believe this sequence of events. if i'd made it up as a joke, i wouldn't have been able to come up with this. i'm totally astonished.

best of all, THEY'RE STILL BILLING ME!

[ikkju_sojun]

old reference numbers:

704CTK190612
875CTK180612


new reference numbers:

ARS 207718
ARS 208134


they don't mean anything. they're just for the record.

[ambroseg1]

they don't mean anything. they're just for the record.

that said....you are screwed?

[ikkju_sojun]

seems so, so far. i asked them to wait two days while i got Amobia out to do a site survey. result came back negative - poor line of sight rules out wireless. so it's back to talking to the various people at Telkom.

fifth of July, today. this has been going on since the beginning of April. i asked them to move a line from one suburb to another - that's the sort of thing you'd imagine they do every day. April, May, June, July. and they've been unable to do it. i know taxi drivers who're more efficient.

and they haven't once looked like they even know what they're doing. not anyone.

it's like being in Somalia, except that in Somalia, you could probably pay a pirate to bring you a Telkom engineer and hold him hostage until something was installed. i'm now just waiting to see what happens next with genuine disaffection. i'd pay three, four times as much just to never have to deal with them again. and happily.

the only consolation i'm getting is from keeping records of this and updating everyone i know.

[ikkju_sojun]

apparently, Telkom staff are reading this forum - and this thread specifically. i decided to help them by creating a common collection point for Telkom feedback. happy reading.

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthre...t-an-ADSL-line

"I ordered my voice lines in February this year and installation took about 3 weeks. Immediately after the voice line was installed, I asked for one of the voice lines to be converted into an ADSL line - this was in March or so. I was told to wait until April 2012 for Telkoms new financial year as there were no ports available. April comes and goes and still no ADSL. Telkom now claims I must wait until April 2013, another financial year, as they will possible add more ports then. I am not waiting over 1 year for ADSL! I live in an estate with 400 homes. My neighbours all have ADSL. The cable is in the ground. Everything is there. Surely someone needs to be klapped!"


http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthre...calls-to-10210

" am so bored with this whole Telkom installation issues, I am a new customer and have not used Telkom before but the service is horendous! My line was scheduled to be installed on 25 June and today the technician comes but says he cant install the line... anyways the technician tells me to call the dread 10210 number when all is sorted for him to come back and finalize installation. I call them and get told the technician closed the order and the next date for installation is 2 July. I am so fed up as I had to call countless times since last week just for one person to come."


http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthre...rama-Cape-Town

"According to the technician what needs to happen is for Telkom to install a min-exchange for the area to boost the line transmission and requests have been made on numerous occassions to Telkom but nothing has happened and no one knows if it will ever happen."


http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthre...13-Dear-Telkom

"So I wanted to move my ADSL line from my current house to my new house, sounds simple right? Apparently not. I had a 4mbps line, which should have been cancelled when my new 4mbps line was installed. Now for some reason who ever lives in my old house has a 4mbps line and I have a 384kbps line at my new house. Is there a Telkom rep on here? Or have they not yet figured out how the internet works either since they clearly can not read forms."


http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthre...-a-Telkom-Line

"I've asked Telkom to move my line from one apartment to another in the same building.
What exactly is involved in moving the line? The new apartment is wired for a line, it even has a plug on the wall for it. They tell me it's going to take 13 days for them to move it. I'm located in the Cape Town CBD. It took less time for them to install a new line the first time."


http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthre...dsl-line-today

"it is now 12:54pm and he hasn't called. Should I worry? I've only been waiting since September 2011."


"Atleast you got an installation date. My order has been pending for over 2 yrs now....no infrastructure / no cables etc.... and after 2 yrs the same excuse still applies."

"Called the call centre now. They tried contacting the techie. After two attempts of his phone going to voicemail, the operator cut my call."




i'll add more as i find them

[ikkju_sojun]

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthre...ith-Telkom-pls

"You should have started nagging them at least six months ago. I moved six months ago, phoned them about moving two weeks before, and I'm still waiting..."


http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthre...m-ADSL-Support

"Average Hold Time: One Hour, Two Minutes"

"Without resolving the issue, dispatching a techie, or even bothering to CONTACT ME, they close the fault."

" Of course, no one ever called about it, so I phoned them"

"The longest I hold for telkom on Speaker phone btw.. was 2.30hours before someone picked up and then switched me to 5 differenet other sections"

[Roadrunner]

I would suggest going this route, by placing a reward ad in the paper for anyone that can fix this for you:

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthre...p-with-ADSL-Ad

http://152.111.1.88/argief/berigte/b.../mstelkom.html

Seems like they sorted out his issue pronto, once they woke up.

[ikkju_sojun]

also of interest, at least to me - here are the calls I made from my cell phone during June alone about this installation.

clarification:

these are all calls made to the call centre trying to find out what was going on. this excludes calls made from my landline - i'll try get that up later - and excludes calls made to a technician's voice mail (all that ever works), or someone else's land line. these are just to the call center. bear in mind that many times i just waited long enough to provide my own number for a callback.

so in reality, none of these calls represents me actually getting through to anyone.

07 June, 10h26
29 minutes

07 June, 11h52
7 minutes

12 June, 13h31
03 minutes

12 June, 13h34
10 minutes

15 June, 18h24
02 minutes

15 June, 18h28
29 minutes

18 June, 16h55
23 minutes

29 June, 09h39
03 minutes

02 July, 11h03
5 minutes

06 July 13h53,
3 minutes

to get the full effect, you must imagine that between each call listed here.... nothing happens.


quick and dirty analysis:

so that's 10 calls, at least. double that to get the likely total number of calls including those from my land line. say 20 calls, over June alone. over April, May and June, that comes to 60 outgoing calls.

this record excludes calls made to the and from the lady in escalations who is trying to get the problems sorted out. so add another 10 calls during June for that too.


total calls made to try and get a line moved: +- 70.

number of lines moved: 0


update: still being billed for this, by the way. obviously, i have reservations about paying them for this. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHA. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. sorry. hold on, a minute....ok. cool. i'm better.

so the billing issue is one that has apparently been deferred by them, for the time being. obviously.

[ikkju_sojun]

forgot to mention the best part. after the second escalation on Hello Peter, i got called by a woman from their escalations department, who tried to get me to leave a number and go away - i cunningly insisted on speaking to someone in charge. i got transferred to a woman called "Viola", who claimed to be the "head of escalations".

when i transferred to her line, she spent ten minutes complaining because i escalated this (you read that right), then shouted me down, then talked over me and then ended the conversation summarily and put the phone down on me.

what do you think her parting line was? it's AWESOME!. it was this: "I don't have to listen to you just because i'm supposed to".

really. that's verbatim. read it again. BEAUTIFUL. see it? yes? right. it says "FAIL".

[GreyBush]

Jassis but you can type.

[ikkju_sojun]

more feedback from Telkom users:

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthre...kom-employees)

"I also had Telkom closing the tickets ...The only time that I had any contact was when I phoned in. Whenever a tech called he'd come up with some excuse about not being able to call me back soon, or that he tested the line and it was perfect :/ I'd call back a day later, and they would say that the ticket was closed. Happened twice that it was closed, and the last one when it started working, they didn't even close it - I've had no confirmation/sms/nothing."



http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthre...sage-to-Telkom

"I was told, phoning in for the upgrade, that there was a lead time of at least 3 months before a technician could be assigned to upgrade our line. I threatened to take photos of the bakkies and to publicize them to demonstrate that they were not being honest. Within the same call, I was told that they'd be able to get a technician out the next week to upgrade the line; I told them this was unacceptable, the technicians are parking in their bakkies at least every two days near my house and are not working for hours on end. They sent someone out a day later."

"At the amount of money we're forced to pay in this country for (Telkom's) ultimately worthless services, most people trying to utilize a 4mbps connection could easily use that money to pay for rent on small flats elsewhere in the world with vastly superior internet connections included in the package."

[ikkju_sojun]

Jassis but you can type.

i'm normally the best customer in the world, and i will talk you up at the drop of a hat - i'm an irritatingly hyperactive advocate of those services that i think are great and my friends hate it - but these people have been wiping their arse on me for months, taking salaries day in and out, with no shame at all.

it's the contempt in their business model, their attitude and their dealings with me that grates the most at the moment. they have no manners and i have no distractions. all my time can be dedicated to devising satisfying fantasy scenarios in which they all explode in spontaneous human combustion, and as their charred corpses collapse to the ground, they accidentally activate my ADSL account.

i asked for a simple, uncomplicated service, and i will get it, even if i have to compress my hatred into a diamond-hard ball of pure injury and grind it into a weapon that could kill Superman.

if that's what it takes.

[Reaver.ZA]

He's actually very composed throughout this whole thing. If it were me I wouldn't be able to post anything since I would BLIKSEM my keyboard to pieces trying to recall every frustrating thing that has happened