Of all the stupid, moronic, idiotic stances I've ever come across, this one must take the cake:
I've had ADSL since October last year, and have been a Telkom user for more than 30 years, taking pride in the fact that I've never defaulted on any payments. Everything seemed hunky-dory till 3 months ago, when I received a call from their accounts people, saying that I'd 'exceeded my limit'. My response was essentially 'Heh?', not knowing what this was all about. It was then explained to me that they had a 'credit policy', had exceeded the credit limit, and had to make a payment within 5 days.
My perfectly justifiable response was that I had no knowledge of any 'credit limit' or ceiling of any kind, that I had not asked for a credit review to be done, that my payment history should reflect that I posed no risk of default, that I had not at that stage received a statement of account reflecting any amount owed, and that I resented being bothered about payment of a few Rand that exceeded a 'limit', which I had no knowledge of in the first place.
All of this went completely over the head of the moron who had phoned me, so I just gave up and said I'd deposit whatever was owed, via Internet banking (which, on reflection, I probably should not have done). Be all that as it may, the very next month the same thing happened - a call from some idiot about my 'limit' being exceeded. This time, I gently said that she should refer to her supervisor for guidance on how to handle my account, ensuring that she did whatever needed to be done to remove my continued recording on her follow-up list, as I resented being contacted about this. She suggested that I should ask for a higher 'credit limit'.
Now, if there was ever an idiotic suggestion, this was it - since when do you ask a customer to set his/her own credit limit, particularly when there is no apparent need for it in the first place? Is the essence of credit management not to minimise outstanding debtors, which providing <i>carte blanche</i> regarding credit limits in this manner, blatantly contradicts?
Realising that this idiot was merely trying to do her job, and that she was genuinely trying to help rectify what appeared to be a problem according to their current policies, I gently said 'Sure, ask your supervisor to fix the credit limit amount', or words to that effect, and ended the call. At that stage I had already received a statement of account anyway, and subsequently merely made payment of the reflected balance as per normal, well within the due date.
I essentially forgot about all this till 2 days ago, when once again, I received a call from them. This time, I practically exploded, and came very close to verbal abuse of an extreme kind - fortunately, I managed to bite down on the f's and b's. I nevertheless made it quite clear that this was unacceptable, and that I expected a call from her supervisor about this. Well, lo and behold, I received a call from somebody called Claudia this morning, whose approach was: "Sir, I've been told you've asked for an increase on your credit limit, but you haven't said what it should be. Could you please give me a new amount?"
If you've ever heard of a 'pregnant pause', well - that's what happened, while I waited for the red spots dancing in front of my eyes to fade away, and regain some semblance of normality. When I eventually reached this point (it must have been at least one whole minute before I replied, without even a query from her as to whether I was still on the line), I once again attempted to explain that all of this was ridiculous, and that their credit policy, procedure and practice needed to be reviewed. It had also dawned on me that this problem was probably caused by Telkrap's rates increase in January - after all, I had no problem previously, despite having ADSL since October last year, and with no change in my usage patterns on the voice service whatsoever (except for a short period in December, when I was away). Says a lot about Telkrap management - they did not think about the affect a rates increase would have on their credit collection policies, their billing standards, their service standards, their customer relationships, etc. Even if they did, it was probably only superficially done - they were probably blinded by the prospective revenue boost, the impact on their shareholder value, and that nice new Yengeni or X5 they saw in the showroom during office hours the previous day...
If I had any expectations that I would be understood - well, what a forlorn hope! To cut a long story short, her standpoint was that she could do nothing except set a credit limit of anything between R1500 and R6500 (which I had to decide on), that their policies were 'approved by incasa[sic]' , and that if I had any suggestions about their policies, I should write to 'incasa'. Despite spending what seemed to be at least 10 minutes on the phone with her, explaining what real credit management was all about (I used to be the Credit Manager for a large multi-national corporate), I made absolutely no headway whatsoever! The words of the Jethro Tull song 'Thick as a Brick' echoed eerily in the back of my mind, as I spoke... Be all that as it may, I eventually called it quits - I have better things to do with my time, than tilt at windmills. I said to her that she should set the credit limit at R2000, and not bother me again.
Well, that's my Telkrap story for the day - I'm not going to bother submitting anything to ICASA, despite Claudia's suggestion, as that would merely make me hot under collar again. Now to go make some green tea...
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] What a bunch of incompetent fools. I have never ever heard of such a load of bull in my whole life. On my credit card it says their very clearly what my revolving and budget credit limits are and who I can phone if I ever need to increase it from anywhere in the world for that matter.