Sign up with GoogleThe following is a letter I sent to some newspapers after my Telkom experience. Telkom has not responded in any way to me, by the way.
"I think your readers should be made aware of a little trickery Telkom uses to fatten its bloated profits even further.
I was invited by a Telkom flier to make use of its ADSL internet connection. I went to the local Client Services and was told I will get 3Gig internet access a month at 10Mbps. If I use up my 3 Gig before the end of the month I will be throttled to a server where I will get internet access "under 64 kbs" until the end of the month. Fair. Even 50kbs is ok, or 20kbs or 10kbs for that matter. I duly signed the agreement for two years seeing that I now have numerous students in France and will spend a large part of the day communicating with them via the Internet.
Surprise! ADSL was installed the Friday. That weekend an acquaintance said he had just cancelled his ADSL because when he had used up his 3Gig and YOU CONNECT TO OVERSEAS WEBSITES YOU GET ACCESS AT LESS THAN 1 KBS! What a way to go from "under 64kbs"!!
When I went to Client services and asked why they did not tell me of the overseas slow speeds the answer was that they did not know about it! Nobody that they called knew about it except finally a guy in the technical section. When I asked if I could cancel my subscription I was told I then had to pay a penalty of R2000!. I got ADSL because of my students in France which was going to be a problem if I ran out of the 3 GIG.
Why does Telkom not tell us about the slow access to overseas sites? Does it not care? Has it heard of the business concept of assessing your clients needs before selling something? Does it say "under 64kbs" in order to deliberately mislead just to get the subscription?
The answer is simple. If you have a monopoly you don't care about customer satisfaction or quality service."
"I think your readers should be made aware of a little trickery Telkom uses to fatten its bloated profits even further.
I was invited by a Telkom flier to make use of its ADSL internet connection. I went to the local Client Services and was told I will get 3Gig internet access a month at 10Mbps. If I use up my 3 Gig before the end of the month I will be throttled to a server where I will get internet access "under 64 kbs" until the end of the month. Fair. Even 50kbs is ok, or 20kbs or 10kbs for that matter. I duly signed the agreement for two years seeing that I now have numerous students in France and will spend a large part of the day communicating with them via the Internet.
Surprise! ADSL was installed the Friday. That weekend an acquaintance said he had just cancelled his ADSL because when he had used up his 3Gig and YOU CONNECT TO OVERSEAS WEBSITES YOU GET ACCESS AT LESS THAN 1 KBS! What a way to go from "under 64kbs"!!
When I went to Client services and asked why they did not tell me of the overseas slow speeds the answer was that they did not know about it! Nobody that they called knew about it except finally a guy in the technical section. When I asked if I could cancel my subscription I was told I then had to pay a penalty of R2000!. I got ADSL because of my students in France which was going to be a problem if I ran out of the 3 GIG.
Why does Telkom not tell us about the slow access to overseas sites? Does it not care? Has it heard of the business concept of assessing your clients needs before selling something? Does it say "under 64kbs" in order to deliberately mislead just to get the subscription?
The answer is simple. If you have a monopoly you don't care about customer satisfaction or quality service."
