Telkom billing

Cius

Cius

Honorary Master
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So I have a Telkom landline (I know I know, its for the wife OK, she likes calling her mom daily on it). Anyways, for the past umpteen years it had a usage bill and a fixed monthly cost and on average I would budget about R400 per month with half being the fixed cost and half being usage. Anyways, as of about November Telkom stopped charging me usage. I now just have a flat bill of R210. First month I figured billing error perhaps it will correct next month but it has now been a few months and still paying just the flat rate. Anyone else having this? Did something change? Or am I about to be blacklisted?
 
Look at the detailed breakdown of the charges.
That will explain what is being charged for.
Compare the current bill with that of the previous bills to see what has changed.
Any changes made by you or your wife?
 
Nope, using it the same. Sometime in August the usage just stopped being measured. My August bill had only 2 phone calls on the detailed breakdown for a total of R2 and since then nothing despite us using the phone still the same as always.
 
Go and sort it out face to face with Telkom. Leaving it is inviting a future problem. Someone is being billed for those calls.
 
Geoff.D said:
Go and sort it out face to face with Telkom. Leaving it is inviting a future problem. Someone is being billed for those calls.
Click to expand...
OK, so I called and it seems I was auto migrated sometime last year to some new package where telkom to telkom calls are free and my wife tends to only call two numbers from our phone (Mom and my work, both telkom lines). Hence all our phone calls are now free unless we call a cell number or something. Overall that halves my phone bill just about.

On the other side I have had two calls in the last 2 months stating copper is being discontinued in my area and we are being migrated to some new wireless tech that I have heard is terrible in terms of line quality so perhaps that will undo all the good Telkom somehow managed here. Will have to see. They keep promising to call me back to give the details but have not done so. If there are further updates I'll post it here for the interest of the community.
 
We decided to go ahead with the LTE migration from Fixed Line at my mother's place in CT. To an FLLA LTE service. primarily because the phone is now "mobile" or "portable" and can be placed wherever she is in the home instead of her having to battle to get to the fixed location.

The service is actually working very well, BUT the migration process was a drawn-out disaster. The delivered instrument was faulty right from the outset and it took forever for Telkom to agree that it was faulty and should be replaced under warranty.
My suggestion is, test the instrument immediately on delivery, and if it is not working go that same day to a Telkom shop and start the replacement process. They make a complete meal out of the issue if they rule that the 7-day time period lapses, and it appears to start counting from the moment the order is processed, NOT from the day it is delivered to you.

The service is fine for her and certainly has improved comms to her from the family.
 
Cius said:
OK, so I called and it seems I was auto migrated sometime last year to some new package where telkom to telkom calls are free and my wife tends to only call two numbers from our phone (Mom and my work, both telkom lines). Hence all our phone calls are now free unless we call a cell number or something. Overall that halves my phone bill just about.

On the other side I have had two calls in the last 2 months stating copper is being discontinued in my area and we are being migrated to some new wireless tech that I have heard is terrible in terms of line quality so perhaps that will undo all the good Telkom somehow managed here. Will have to see. They keep promising to call me back to give the details but have not done so. If there are further updates I'll post it here for the interest of the community.
Click to expand...
Same happened to my in-laws, about a year ago, they were "auto-migrated" from land line to "Look-Alike-3G" and lost the pensioner discount..
In Aug 2019, they were again "auto-migrated" again to a voice-call-300 for R300/pm included free local calls, but international was still charged $$$, their monthly bill was ~R500 pm after all the "auto-migration".

I then "manual-migrated" and "number ported" them to VoIP (FreshPhone) and their VoIP bill is now ~R100pm - and they phone family overseas much more often.
They have "free" access to internet via a kind neighbors open wifi ;-)

EDIT: No more bill for 1st minute - pure-per-second
1581325766856.png
The 351 calls to Vodaphone were charged by Telkom at ~R10/min, so a 50m call would have been R500, now R50 on Freshphone
The 083/082 calls were all charged for the the full first minute on Telkom.
 
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