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

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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.

 

[ProfA]

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/showthread.php/443909-Who-must-I-bribe-to-get-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/showthr...-not-installed-after-countless-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/showthr...-TELKOM-to-fix-exchange-in-Panorama-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/showthread.php/439313-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/showthread.php/438265-Moving-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/showthr...hie-is-supposed-to-install-my-adsl-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/showthread.php/58699-Need-Advice-for-dealing-with-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/showthread.php/94649-Dealing-with-Telkom-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/showthread.php/48534-Ad-in-Beeld-Reward-offered-Please-help-with-ADSL-Ad

http://152.111.1.88/argief/berigte/beeld/2006/07/25/B1/5/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. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. 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/showthr...x-internet-(before-I-murder-telkom-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/showthread.php/395843-A-message-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

 

[ikkju_sojun]

current reference number:

58456229A

old reference numbers:

704CTK190612
875CTK180612
ARS 207718
ARS 208134

 

[ikkju_sojun]

more light reading for the Telkom staff who are browsing this thread...

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/381561-(This-is-a-Rant)-Telkom-Internet-ADSL-Top-Up-Issue

"Yeah right. I've currently been waiting 48 days for a DSL with zero progress from Telkom at all, is that improved customer service? A few months ago they randomly erroneously just cancelled one of my other lines while it was in use, is that improved customer service? Then they took an hour to answer the phone, is that improved customer service? Then they took another hour while I was forwarded and re-forwarded to literally about ten people until eventually I found someone willing to actually bother to re-instate my erroneously cancelled line, what excellent customer service. Shortly before that I spent about an hour in a Telkom store to unblock international calls on a line, with a nonsensical queue setup whereby they kept helping other people in front of me, eventually the person "helped" me and assured me that international calls were now unblocked ... get home, and guess what, it wasn't done. These are just some of my last few interactions with your "improved customer service". Every single interaction is awful and remains awful."


http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/36201-Transfering-ADSL-line-Telkom-headaches

"I'd suggest you phone Telkom head office in Pretoria and make a fuss...That's what I had to do after waiting almost 4 months for my line to get transferred. "

 

[ikkju_sojun]

this is hilarious

this here...

http://telkomfail.blogspot.com/?view=classic

...is a blog that this person kept of his/her attempt to get Telkom to install and ADSL line.

it goes for 40 days before he seems to abandon it.


selected highlights:

Day 11:

"Called Telkom - The menu is starting to irritate me today. Wait time is about 16 seconds. Spoke to Nazli. She is quite friendly. Took about a minute to read all the logs on the call.. Says her computer system is slow. Summary of our conversation is: Problem was cleared yesterday. Telkom will re-book the appointment.. "

Day 15:

"Spoke to a very rude and unmannered consultant called Florence, who refused to give me a reference number. She had no idea what the cooling off period was, and advised me that cancelling the line would involve cancellation fees!!! Can you believe that? They actually did not deliver the product I bought, and now they want to change me for cancelling! Wow! Telkom's reputation for being stupid is starting to come into focus. Really regretting trying to do business with them."

Day 29:

"On Sunday the Technician troubleshooting my line called me, upset because I don't have a telephone plugged into the line. He tells me that the line cannot sync above 1mbps because of the distance to the exchange. I tell him that I want that in writing, he refuses, but says he will discuss it with his manager. After a while he calls me back and says that his manager agrees that he cannot give the results to me in writing. He tells me that he cannot fix the line to 4mbps. I tell him that until he gives me an excuse in writing or fixes the line I will keep escalating the call. Just after that he closes the call and I receive the following SMS from Telkom: "From 0214257454 - Telkom ADSL 011xxxxxxx(ref 504CRK071210) restored." "



at least i'm starting to understand that it isn't personal. their contempt, apathy and ignorance are universally applied. good to know.

 

[ikkju_sojun]

i'm told a technician will be coming to my house tomorrow. i live in hope.

i've also been told to escalate the matter to Pamela Khumalo, on (012) 311 5253. i did call, but it being 15h00 on a Friday when i called, there was no reply. i also mailed this thread and its precis contents to the few Telkom Media Relations addresses i could track down. i posed it as a question: in the light of Telkom's desire to become more customer-centric, how do they feel that alignment is going?

we'll see how the weekend goes down and call her on Monday.

 

[ikkju_sojun]

post-weekend update:

the lady I've been dealing with to try and fix this organised two technicians to come to the house on Saturday morning. unlike the last time she tried, they came. turns out there was (STILL) a cable problem, as there was in May and as there was in June. so the guy hustled to fix it and succeeded.

then i showed the second guy how to configure the router successfully. et voila! everything has access. so the nett result is that there infrastructure and access problem is finally solved.

the problems that this has caused to the reconciliation of the account still lie before me - telkom staff have claimed the line to be installed when when it wasn't, have logged fixes for problems that were never fixed and the financial record is now a complete disaster. fortunately, i have refused to pay until they sort the problems out and so i am not out of pocket, but there is a reconciliation exercise that she will perform and books that will have to be balanced.

i am also quite serious about finding another ISP, since this whole mess has left me with a tremendously sour taste in my mouth about Telkom and i am really pretty uncomfortable about giving them any business going forward. any suggestions will be welcome.

lastly, the lady who has been helping me is a gem and needs some recognition.

her name is Denise Demeyer. i got her details from a thread on this forum (and if you need them PM me, because i don't want to snow her under). she has stuck to the task like a limpet, despite never formally being allocated this escalation. (that's right - she just took over the call i made and stayed with it.) her determination to get this simple work done has been the reason it got done. she called me in the evenings to test the line and have the account access reset. she called last weekend to follow up on whether the technician had arrived - sadly, no - and she called multiple times this weekend, liaised with the technicians when they drove off and got them back to the house, followed up in the afternoon Saturday and during the day on Sunday.

i've just got off the phone with her now. she was calling to check in and establish that the problem had remained resolved, and to let me know what the next steps are. she's also taken over the straightening out of the account. i am therefore certain it will be resolved.

she's never bitched about this work. and she's never behaved like every other Telkom employee i've spoken to (that is: shouted, screamed, insulted me, cut me off on the phone, lied to me or abandoned the work undone).

Telkom is getting a massive boost from her and from people like her. it doesn't deserve them.