A warning for 4mb users that are not getting 10mb upgrades

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bgotapen

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Just a heads up, if you have the fastest (4mb) account and you are paying full price be warned that you will not be "downgraded" to faster (Was 2mb now 4mb) automatically.

You will keep paying the R425 instead of the R299 your supposed to. Today I got a lot of conflicting info on this from telkom but it is basically because your on the "fastest dsl" they will upgrade your to 10mb even if you can not get in in your area and you will KEEP paying the R425 for the R299 speeds.

The one woman on the phone was telling me that this would work the same for everyone where the exchange does not support 10mb and that it was up to the customer to downgrade. :sick:

just telkom being telkom I suppose.
 
I was told that those who were on exchanges or DSLAMs that does not support higher speeds will NOT be upgraded to the higher profile, and will therefor not be paying more (or well the same, rather).
 
So just to confirm for my one and only tired brain cell... I have to tell them to downgrade me to 4mbps from 4mbps if I cannot get the benefit of the automatic transition to 10mbps? Crapes! :wtf:
 
I called them today cause I saw on my bill it was still charged for the full price. They didn't want to do it. Even though I told them the price is not the same as on their website
 
Does Telkom charge to do the downgrade process? I know I have twice paid double when doing upgrades.
 
bgotapen said:
Just a heads up, if you have the fastest (4mb) account and you are paying full price be warned that you will not be "downgraded" to faster (Was 2mb now 4mb) automatically.

You will keep paying the R425 instead of the R299 your supposed to. Today I got a lot of conflicting info on this from telkom but it is basically because your on the "fastest dsl" they will upgrade your to 10mb even if you can not get in in your area and you will KEEP paying the R425 for the R299 speeds.

The one woman on the phone was telling me that this would work the same for everyone where the exchange does not support 10mb and that it was up to the customer to downgrade. :sick:

just telkom being telkom I suppose.
Click to expand...

Just a quick question:
Were you (or anyone here that was on 4Mbps, not 1 and 2Mbps) informed of the upgrades in form of an email, text or phone call? Forget about reading it somewhere on my broadband or Facebook etc. Literally contacted by Telkom themselves?
 
sactjt said:
Just a quick question:
Were you (or anyone here that was on 4Mbps, not 1 and 2Mbps) informed of the upgrades in form of an email, text or phone call? Forget about reading it somewhere on my broadband or Facebook etc. Literally contacted by Telkom themselves?
Click to expand...

No! No indication at all that I was being "upgraded". Thanks to this forum :) I now know that I need to contact the dreaded call centre. I just wonder how many non-forum readers are even aware of these "upgrades" and are continuing to pay for a speed improvement that doesn't exist?
 
sactjt said:
Just a quick question:
Were you (or anyone here that was on 4Mbps, not 1 and 2Mbps) informed of the upgrades in form of an email, text or phone call? Forget about reading it somewhere on my broadband or Facebook etc. Literally contacted by Telkom themselves?
Click to expand...

A standard e-mail was sent with all the upgrade details. (I was on 4Mbps and still is)
 
Dan C said:
A standard e-mail was sent with all the upgrade details. (I was on 4Mbps and still is)
Click to expand...

I was not notified at all. As alexandergrahambell posted above, I also wonder how many fools are being taken for a ride. I read about the upgrades on mybroadband, luckily. Whilst the whole 4Mbps upgrades were taking place, I already knew that this was going to happen and I constantly phoned Telkom to upgrade me to a higher speed with no luck due to my exchange. I phoned Telkom +- 6 times before end November to downgrade my line as I did not want to be charged "more". The different representatives kept on telling me that it would not be necessary as quote, "Telkom will not charge you for a service you can not use". Well, I received my bill for December and surprise, surprise, I was billed for a service I can not use. I have to now take time out of my day to phone the call center, argue for 20 minutes because the people there have no clue what's going on, just to downgrade my line to a speed it was suppose to be on in the first place. I also end up paying R126 more for this service in December than my next door neighbour. This whole process seems wonderful for the lucky ones who's exchanges does support higher speeds but horrible for the people like me or even worse, the ones that arent even aware of this.

Ps. My last call to telkom was 3 days ago. This was after I received my bill. The lady I spoke to said that she won't be able to downgrade my line as she needs authority from someone higher up to do so. This was the downgrade/cancellation department. Aaargh. She said that she would escalate my query to this "higher authority person" and will definitely be contacted by no later than 2 days. Well, it's now three days later...
 
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Leaving the free speed upgrades out of the equation there seems to be a lot of confusion regarding what existing "up to 10Mbps" ADSL line / TI Uncapped 4Mbps users were billed in December.

My account reduced by R120 as Do Uncapped Premium (4Mbps) dropped from R369 to R249, there was no automatic upgrade to Do Uncapped Premium Plus (up to 10Mbps) - new Dec pricing R574.

The billing for my DSL Fastest line remained the same at R425.

BTW my line syncs at 8Mbps and I have now upgraded to Do Uncapped Premium Plus. If I could only sync at 4MBps I would have downgraded to DSL Faster for the additional savings.
 
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I did received a SMS from Telkom before the started with the upgrades.... It was very vague and did not exactly say what was going to happen.

I feel its very unfair what telkom is doing. I spoke to a tech about my exchange and he told me too much hardware needs to be replaced for my exchange to support higher speeds so I should not expect 10Mbps anytime soon. Yet my December bill is still charging me the higher price.... My neigbour has been bumped up to 4Mbps from 2Mbps and is paying the R299 price. VERY VERY sneaky and rogue like from telkom to say the least.... Skelems
 
This whole process is a little confusing and believe me we also playing catchup with Telkom. If Telkom doesn't inform us of the upgrade, we don't know to mail you and let you know to change your package. But essentially that is the best time to upgrade or downgrade to ensure that you get the product that you actually want. Have just been through this with another client and he was on 4Mbps and wanted to stay on 4Mbps. Telkom upgraded him to an unstable 10Mbps and then downgraded him to 2Mbps - even though we're still not sure how that happened.

I would advise just hanging on until we know your line has been upgraded - otherwise a downgrade is not going to be feasible and Telkom won't give us the option. But from our side - until Telkom notified us, you could be on an upgraded line with a lesser data package, so we by default charge you the same rate until you can realise that saving (or extra speed) after the upgrade.

I know it's not ideal, but there is a LOT of confusion out there, and we're doing our best to cope with this latest Telkom surprise. If we drop your package without an actual upgrade happening, we'll be paying Telkom a lot more on your line than is feasible - especially in a bundle. We know it's not ideal, but you can rest assured that the "extra" money - which is not actually anything extra - is all going to Telkom and not to us :(
 
Aaargh!
I have just spent 50 minutes on 10210 - 25 minutes on hold, and 25 minutes with an agent - in an attempt to get my current 'fastest' service downgraded to 'faster. Despite Telkom's December announcement about upgrading 'faster' clients to 4 Mbps, the Telkom call centre insists that 'faster' is a 2 Mbps service.
Now my Bryanston exchange line supports 10 Mbps, but I am on old copper, and too far from the exchange to sync at 10. In fact, I recently had to drop my sync rate from 4096 to 3072 kbps because of deteriorating line quality.
So Telkom is unable to deliver a 'fastest' service to my location, and according to their own press releases, I should not be billed for 'fastest'. But that's using normal logic, not Telkom internal logic.

If Telkom has in fact upgraded their 'faster' DSL offering from 2 to 4 Mbps, why does their options centre not know this, six weeks after the fact?
 
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