When did Always-On start to mean when Telkom feels like it?
While it may still throw a few punches at the company that controls the SA Internet Exchange (SAIX), the story has expanded to include the issue of customer service, or rather, the lack thereof.
The simple answer, of course, to the question: “Why does Telkom not seem to care about its customers” would be that the company effectively controls the Internet in this country, so it doesn’t really have to care.
As someone who works in a small office / home office (SOHO) environment, I require Internet access to perform virtually all the tasks related to my job, from sending and receiving e-mail to being able to do research online.
Therefore, Telkom’s ‘Always-On’ Internet would, theoretically, be the logical choice for the office; since so much of my work depends on the Net, and therefore so much use is made of it, it also makes sense to have one of the higher capacity packages, such as the TI-AllAccess Advanced 3GB one.
Sometimes even this is not enough, so here at our office we have recently taken out three such packages, to prevent being capped before the end of the month, should we utilise more bandwidth than allowed.
However, what is described in the sales pitch – and therefore what one purchases – as ‘Always-On’ Internet and what one gets, which could best be described as ‘Sometime-On’ or ‘Sporadically-On’ Internet, are two different things.
In the past few weeks, our supposedly ‘Always-On’ Internet has experienced more ups and downs than a White House intern during the Bill Clinton presidency.
Worse still, when it eventually broke down irretrievably, to the point where we were forced to actually speak to a helpdesk consultant – something that we had not had to do before, since every time we got through, the link would magically come to life, only going down again a little while after we’d hung up – and complain, we found that our bandwidth cap had been reached.
Upon querying how we could possibly have hit a cap of 9GB, we were informed that no, we’d hit a 3GB cap, but when this cap was reached, there was no automatic switchover to the next 3GB package, we had to input a new username and password to activate this.
So not only do they offer us ridiculously slow speeds (that they have the gall to call fast Internet), and not only do they institute a cap, which very few other countries have, they cannot even set up an automatic switchover to a second package when the first one hits that cap!
I cannot understand why the onus should be on the customer to have to change over from one package to the next – surely the person paying the obscene amount of money (yes, I know Telkom has reduced its prices, but they’re still ridiculously high when compared to other nations) for the additional bandwidth has a right to expect their service provider to perform such a task automatically for them? After all, isn’t that exactly what the definition of ‘service provider’ means?
I sometimes like to amuse myself by imagining Telkom Internet as a Formula One team and my DSL 512Kbps service as the race car; had it been racing at the Nurburgring during the last Grand Prix, (and assuming its starter motor wasn’t experiencing downtime when the lights went green) it would have been left at the start line by even the slowest other cars, with their speeds of 1Mbps and higher.
Once it started, it would’ve sporadically stalled, even though its engine was ‘Always On’, then, midway through the race, it would’ve been called into the pits because it had reached its fuel cap, and even if there was more fuel available, the driver would first have to ensure that he had a new authorisation to put it into the vehicle, he couldn’t just expect the pit crew to pump it in.
In fact, as a proud Ferrari fan, I would like to request that Telkom uses some of the exorbitant fees it charges for its Internet services to sponsor the McLaren team – that would undoubtedly ensure victory for either Raikonnen or Massa this season.
Okay, it may sound like I’m having a cheap laugh at Telkom’s expense, and that is true, but you really have to laugh at the way Telkom runs its business– if only so that you don’t burst into tears!
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