Is Telkom confused?
Vincent Maleka, a lawyer from the Duma Nokwe Group asked to lead the Telkom panel, said that if a consumer feels that the ‘R 477-00 access charge’ associated with ADSL is excessive and does not reflect the economic value of the product, that person must go to the competition authorities.
This statement somewhat strange as Telkom previously said that the Competition Commission had no jurisdiction to entertain such complaints as the subject matter related to telecommunications services.
Maleka was contacted to clarify this apparent contradiction and he maintains that the Competition Commission is the correct place to address these pricing issues.
Telkom was subsequently contacted to clear up the confusion surrounding this issue, but unsurprisingly there was no feedback from the monopoly.
As a consumer centric company Telkom should have excellent measures in place to deal with discontent from customers or corporate clients. Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case.
At the recent ICASA hearings the council asked one of the presenters, Mike Lawrie, if he had approached Telkom regarding the billing queries that he had presented before the panel. Lawrie made it clear that he considered it to be a waste of time to question his bill with the incumbent. Many Telkom clients feel exactly the same.
So what should unhappy consumers do? They do not, after all, have a choice of voting with their feet in the fixed line arena.
The lack of transparency and feedback from Telkom is not doing their cause any good and with reports of poor service from personal users like Lawrie it is doubtful if they will win back the hearts of their customer base. In a recent website poll nearly 90% of pollsters felt that Telkom is no more customer centric now than a year ago.
Many of Telkom’s unhappy customers who want to complain may feel that the company is simply telling them to go to hell. Or is that ‘go to Hellkom’?
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