Telkom billing under fire
Numerous complaints have appeared in The Herald letters column in recent months concerning Telkom‘s charging for unanswered or engaged telephone calls. Callers are at a loss as to why calls which are never connected incur the same charges as a normal phone call.
Cheryl Gow wrote in to The Herald: “This argument has been going on for as long as two years now. We had this argument with Telkom back then already, and it said it was not charging, that it was a mistake.
“Eventually though, it admitted it was charging for calls to engaged numbers. It seems it has changed its story now though, and is saying again that it is not charging.
“I just don‘t understand how you can honestly charge people for calls to engaged numbers. I‘ve heard of a couple of incidents of this.
“Needless to say, I‘ve started making notes of when and for how long I call,” said Gow.
Telkom spokesman Ajith Bridgraj said: “Customer perception of being charged for unanswered calls and speculation surrounding short calls resulted a few years ago in Telkom engaging independent audit firm PriceWaterhouse Coopers Incorporated to investigate the integrity and accuracy of the network and billing platforms with regard to short and unanswered calls.
“A short call (say less than five seconds) in most cases is assumed by the caller to be an unanswered call.”
A total of 11 175 calls were made from 27 of the audit firm‘s offices over three months in order to maintain a random methodology.
Calls made to ordinary numbers, fax numbers and cellular numbers were recorded and these records compared with detailed billing printouts supplied by Telkom.
Bridgraj said: “Of the calls made, 98,66 per cent were correctly recorded on individual telephone accounts. Only 1,34% (150 calls) were classified as short calls. These short calls, seemingly engaged or unanswered, are often misinterpreted due to devices linked to Telkom‘s network.”
The statement lists these tones as calls to answering machines, modems, alarm systems, faulty customer premises equipment, fax machines, public phones, Telkom‘s diversion service, ISDN video-conferencing lines, and one-second calls.
Subscriber Stanley Anderson, however, has had the same response and is unconvinced. “That is utter rubbish. What Telkom is doing here is blatant theft and it (Telkom) won‘t even look at the problem anymore.
“As I‘ve come to understand, Telkom has this answering service set up on all its users‘ phones, and this is where our money is going. I can‘t understand how my monthly itemised bill is showing me 52c call charges for three- to five-second calls.
“No one asks anybody if they want an answering service. I had to get mine disconnected. What about all the people who don‘t know they‘ve got this service, for which other people are paying?”
“It is really about time Telkom had some opposition to level the playing field.”
Meanwhile, Telkom‘s competitor, Neotel, was officially launched on August 31.
People are hoping the company will bring much-needed competition to the Telkom monopoly. Neotel spokesman Mala Suriah said: “Wholesale international services were launched on August 31. Initial business services will be available to select customers in December. Retail services are planned to be launched by the end of March next year.”
Inet-Bridge
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