Man denied home loan after not paying cancelled Telkom account
Near the end of 2018 and at the start of 2019, many readers contacted MyBroadband to complain about difficulties in cancelling their Telkom services.
These problems could not be resolved through standard channels, they said, with Telkom continuing to bill them despite cancellations being filed well in advance.
This problem is still prevalent, as a former Telkom customer recently reached out to MyBroadband stating that they have been unable to cancel their Telkom account.
This has had serious repercussions for him – including the fact that he was denied a home loan due to a payment dispute with Telkom.
Cancelling an account
The reader stated that he filed for cancellation of his 100Mbps fibre package from Telkom, but the company did not process it properly.
He filed for cancellation on 23 May 2018, and received confirmation from Telkom that the cancellation was processed on 23 June.
In this communication, Telkom stated that the line was cancelled and all services were stopped.
The company continued to charge him for the fibre package, however, and he was unable to stop the charges after dealing with Telkom’s customer support staff.
To prevent money going off his bank account for the Telkom fibre package he had cancelled, he stopped the associated debit order in August.
He also contacted Telkom’s billing department in an attempt to contact someone who could resolve the problem, but was unsuccessful.
Credit and blacklisting
The cancellation of the debit order came back to haunt the ex-Telkom customer when he recently went to apply for a home loan.
He was told by his bank that his outstanding debt with Telkom would need to be processed before he could proceed with the loan application.
The bank said he had to provide proof of debt settlement on his Telkom account before they could go ahead, as the reader was “four months in arrears” with Telkom and owed just over R10,000.
This is not the first time this has happened to a Telkom customer, and the company is known for blacklisting customers with the credit bureaus without contacting them regarding their “outstanding debt”.
This story is not unique and has occurred many times before – with Telkom customers becoming increasingly frustrated at the inability of support staff to cancel their services.
The issue was said to be caused by the internal processes around cancelling physical lines or releasing fibre lines into a holding pool before changing ISPs.
Telkom has also admitted that it changed its systems in April 2018, and that this change may have been a contributing factor towards the prevalence of cancellation errors.
MyBroadband reached out to Telkom for comment on the home loan denial case, but the company did not provide feedback.
Update: Following MyBroadband’s investigation into the matter, the reader stated that Telkom has now cancelled his account and credited him for the money owed.
The company has also sent a request to the credit bureau to clear the reader’s name, and he is now waiting for confirmation from his bank.
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