Whatever you do, avoid Telkom!!!

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Chris&Jax

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Whatever you do, avoid Telkom!!!
We have ordered the 10mb deal with a 2 years contract. 3 months ago. Absolutely nothing happened yet. Constantly calling them forth past 2 months. They always come up with some BS story. Never got through to the supervisor, apparently always busy or on a call. We're contacting the ICASA today as it is absolutely outrageous what they do. Someone needs to stop this monopoly. Telkom is far the worst in the world probably.
 
Yeah its crazy that a company that has a monopoly also at the same time has zero customer care.

I personally think its just Telkom putting unqualified/untrained personnel up front - the service agents, tech support. I usually have to explain to technical support what all the technical terms mean. The only question they know is : "So the speed is slow?"

There are people willing to help though, not all rotten apples, but they are few.
 
Pretty happy with my Telkom Homeunlimited 20MB.

OP did you have an existing line before making this order? I find that is the qualifying criteria to people getting stuck.

Brand new line orders take time.
 
Chris&Jax said:
Whatever you do, avoid Telkom!!!
We have ordered the 10mb deal with a 2 years contract. 3 months ago. Absolutely nothing happened yet. Constantly calling them forth past 2 months. They always come up with some BS story. Never got through to the supervisor, apparently always busy or on a call. We're contacting the ICASA today as it is absolutely outrageous what they do. Someone needs to stop this monopoly. Telkom is far the worst in the world probably.
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Where are you in the World? And did you check what is available in your area before placing the order? Or did you just go for the offer advertised or responded to a tele sales call?
 
I have checked. Not sure what the way of ordering an ADSL line has to do with what's available. Or with how did I came to my decision. Nor with the fact that TELKOM is far the worst I've ever death with.
 
Chris&Jax said:
I have checked. Not sure what the way of ordering an ADSL line has to do with what's available. Or with how did I came to my decision. Nor with the fact that TELKOM is far the worst I've ever death with.
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It does impact on the matter.
1. There is a very active campaign going on to try and stem the drop in fixed line services. So there are lots of sale people phoning around to try and get new customers.
2. However, IF it is in an area where fibre infrastructure available, it will NOT be ADSL anyway, but on that fibre. IF that is the case, it will take 6 weeks or more to deploy.
3. IF it is on copper, AND you already have a drop wire to your property or in the complex where you live, Telkom must find someone who knows how to do the installation and that could take a while.
4. IF there is no drop wire available or cu in your complex then it will take 6 weeks or more before Telkom finds that out seeing it is the job of Open serve to do anyway.
5. IF you were to approach another service provider of ADSL that is active in your area, you might get a slightly better response but don't count on it.

So where are you? There are a few of us around that can try and establish what is really available in your area.
 
Had a similar experience two months back ordering a fibre line. It was new installation. After four weeks of inactivity I started called them everyday and made sure I was as polite as possible until one day in week 7 or 8 I expressed my frustration and demanded that someone take responsibility and sort it out ASAP. Four days later line installed and account up and running.

I've found that the level of service varies greatly with the person taking your call
 
Thanks for your reply. However I am quite clued up on what's going on, I have been in a SEO field for quite some time. I know exactly how to do my research and also would never make my decision on a spam sales call. Fibre not available and I don't like it as it's stupid expensive and mainly capped which won't work for me. I have decided to go with Telkom as my landlord and a good few people uses it and they are happy with it and also they offer quite a bit of extras which we could make use of.
The place have had ADSL before. All cables in the house.
Also if it was 6 weeks, I wouldn't complain. It's over three months and now we're at the point that we have to re-submit the order. That means g_d knows how much more waiting time ahead.
Also like I've said in the first thread, they have the worst customer service ever. They're rude and refuse to help.
 
Consider yourself lucky themba990. Was it with Telkom? We have done the same thing. Unfortunately Telkom customer service doesn't work that way.
They didn't even log our complaint numerous times. Almost every time we logged a complaint, the next time we called was nothing recorded in the system.
 
How you going to avoid them - if THEY OWN the telecom infrastructure in SA that 90% of ISPs piggy back on?
 
That is why I advise to avoid all on line and telephone contact, and go into a Telkom shop, and look the personnel in the eye, and get a reference number out of them, and if you are polite enough get them to show you the computer screen where they have logged the query/request, etc.

Over the phone or an on line chat, you have absolutely nothing for you to fall back on.

For weeks now I have received calls to "upgrade" my 2 Mbps to 4 Mbps. When I say to them okay, they check back and then say there is no spare VDSL capacity available in my exchange ( which I knew anyway). Then they say they were going to offer to me over to fibre at which point I say great please do it!. The next answer is it is minimum 10 Mbps or nothing so I say okay lets look at the numbers. Then they check and find out the infrastructure has not been handed to them yet from Huawei (which I also knew, 18 months), and then I tell them why it can't be handed over ........ You see, they access the pole from my yard ........ when they try and test ..... about every 2 months or so. Always a different crew wanting to do the same tests instead of sending someone to FIX.
 
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There is no excusing how bad the customer service is, but the value in some of their packages and the quality of their DSL network is undeniable. The all-inclusive 10Mbps uncapped deal with voice line, unlimited landline calls etc. is excellent value. And unlike pretty much every other DSL ISP, the Telkom network performs well and the throttling thresholds are very generous.

Tbh, I'm not sure what other option any DSL user has beyond Telkom. They've all gone to crap. Only if you have fibre can you enjoy an account from Cool Ideas, who are the gold standard right now.
 
DeSLAM said:
How you going to avoid them - if THEY OWN the telecom infrastructure in SA that 90% of ISPs piggy back on?
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Exactly why I just signed up with them as an ISP as well because if I need to deal with them for my line rental I may as well do it for the rest.
 
Geoff.D said:
That is why I advise to avoid all on line and telephone contact, and go into a Telkom shop, and look the personnel in the ye, and get a reference number out of them, and if you are polite enough get them to show you the computer screen where they have logged the query/request, etc.

Over the phone or an on line chat, you have absolutely nothing for you to fall back on.

For weeks now I have received calls to "upgrade" my 2 Mbps to 4 Mbps. When I say to them okay, they check back and then say there is no spare VDSL capacity available in my exchange ( which I knew anyway). Then they say they were going to offer to me over to fibre at which point I say great please do it!. The next answer is it is minimum 10 Mbps or nothing so I say okay lets look at the numbers. Then they check and find out the infrastructure has not been handed to them yet from Huawei (which I also knew, 18 months), and then I tell them why it can't be handed over ........ You see, that access the pole from my yard ........ when they try and test ..... about every 2 months or so. always a different crew wanting to do the same tests instead of sending someone to FIX.
Click to expand...

Client had a problem getting dongle to work. After 7 visits to the Telkom shop, each taking more than hour, various "technical experts" saying that it was now working, which it wasn't, I messaged TelkomSA who analysed the problem only to find that the shop person had inserted incorrect values, and fixed it. So it appears that the only way to get the job done is message TelkomSA. The shop manager wo assured me that she would phone me when she got response from 'senior management' still hasn't.

It's ridiculous that a company the size of Telkom only has technical support at two shops in Western Cape, Kenilworth and Century City, with only one person on duty at any one time. The technical support does not have access to various backend processes which requires one to go to a queue to speak to somebody who can submit a dispute. It appears that everything in Telkom is siloed with no communication between silos. The portal is badly designed, why am I asked to log in a second time when checking usage?

So the shops are not a solution either.
 
Chris&Jax said:
We have ordered the 10mb deal..
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Chris&Jax said:
However I am quite clued up on what's going on, I have been in a SEO field for quite some time. I know exactly how to do my research and also would never make my decision on a spam sales call. Fibre not available and I don't like it as it's stupid expensive and mainly capped which won't work for me. I have decided to go with Telkom as my landlord and a good few people uses it and they are happy with it and also they offer quite a bit of extras which we could make use of.
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The adsl & fibre packages are identical in costs and extras offered based on line speed. You have capped & uncapped options on both as well, 10Mbs uncapped fibre unlimitedhome package costs the same as the 10Mbs uncapped adsl unlimitedhome package. Fibre has the added benefit of having a much higher upload speed than adsl and is also more reliable.

In your case fibre is not available so irrelevant.
 
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Oh, yes. Numerous times. We have been promised a call for last morning with an update on our case. Never happened.
 
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