Telkom’s top consumer rating confuses
For the last few months, Telkom dominated the top spot for complaints about ‘Companies who do not respond’.
With 849 complaints and only 115 compliments, it did not look good for the telecommunications provider. A few weeks ago Telkom decided to join HelloPeter as a company ‘who responds’, which meant that it was immediately removed from the top spot of ‘complaints about companies who don’t respond’.
To the surprise of many Telkom customers they appeared on the top spot of the ‘compliments about companies who respond’ only a few weeks after topping the complaints list.
HelloPeter explained that the company that received the most compliments or complaints over the last 10 days tops the list for each category. It is however impossible for a company who responds to be included in the complaints category or vice versa.
Payoff to hide complaints?
Telkom’s consistent appearance on the top spot of the complaints list may have been a major incentive for it to start responding on the consumer website. It definitely serves as an incentive for companies to join HelloPeter, as witnessed by its 298 strong ‘companies who respond’ list.
For some, concerns arose due to the fact that companies have to pay an annual fee to HelloPeter to respond to customers and join the ‘companies who respond’ list. The main issue raised is that money can effectively ‘buy’ a company off the complaints list.
It is however beneficial for customers when a company starts to respond to them, and HelloPeter’s revenue model may serve the purpose of both keeping the website going and encouraging companies to join the website.
When looking at the complaints and compliments sections on the HelloPeter website it should however be noted that the list it is not a clear reflection of compliments or complaints but rather an indication of the companies’ attitude towards customers.
It is however telling that Telkom remains absent from the MyADSL forums where many of its customers congregate.
On MyADSL there are no fees for companies to join, but there are also no incentives like being removed from a complaints list. This raises the question as to whether Telkom only joined the HelloPeter website to be removed from the complaints list.
This may well be the case, but it is nonetheless encouraging that the telecoms giant started responding to consumers online.
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