{"id":300470,"date":"2019-03-26T07:49:03","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T05:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=300470"},"modified":"2019-03-26T09:08:42","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T07:08:42","slug":"telkom-is-killing-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/telecoms\/300470-telkom-is-killing-itself.html","title":{"rendered":"Telkom is killing itself"},"content":{"rendered":"

Telkom is facing a challenging future, with a growing number of South Africans vowing to never deal with the company again due to its poor customer service.<\/p>\n

MyBroadband receives daily complaints from Telkom subscribers who are unable to cancel their services<\/strong><\/a> due to the company\u2019s poor systems.<\/p>\n

Many former Telkom subscribers also complain about being billed despite having cancelled their services months ago, and if they stop paying they run the risk of being blacklisted<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried for 3 months to cancel our ADSL service with Telkom without success. We have never had such a poor experience with any service provider,\u201d MyBroadband was told by a Telkom DSL subscriber.<\/p>\n

\u201cTelkom is forcing people selfishly to remain indebted to them just because you once had a service with them. They have zero care for customers,\u201d another client said on HelloPeter.<\/p>\n

New system launched, but without success<\/h3>\n

In January, Telkom said<\/strong><\/a> it was working to improve the accessibility of its support mechanisms to customers.<\/p>\n

This included a feature which allows customers previously unable to cancel their accounts to process the matter online.<\/p>\n

Telkom also acknowledged that errors in the migration of its cancellation system resulted in users being incorrectly blacklisted, and promised to improve in this area.<\/p>\n

Despite these interventions, customers still struggle with this problem and in some areas the company\u2019s support became worse.<\/p>\n

MyBroadband continues to receive complaints about cancellation problems, with many people reporting that Telkom\u2019s helpdesk and support platform is often down.<\/p>\n

This means that customers can not cancel their services and are left frustrated by the company\u2019s poor support.<\/p>\n

The effect on Telkom\u2019s numbers<\/h3>\n

While making it difficult for customers to cancel their service may result in short-term financial gains, the long-term damage to Telkom is devastating.<\/p>\n

The company is already losing fixed-line subscribers at a record rate and its poor reputation means it is unlikely to turn the tide.<\/p>\n

Telkom now has 2,566,000 fixed-line subscribers, down from 2,840,000 a year ago. This is a year-on-year decline of 274,000 lines.<\/p>\n

Telkom is also losing fixed-broadband subscribers despite its continued investment in a fibre rollout.<\/p>\n

Telkom is blaming competition from mobile services, copper theft, and tough economic conditions for this decline – but there is more to it.<\/p>\n

Even if people can get access to Telkom\u2019s fixed-broadband services, they prefer to use other companies because of Telkom’s poor reputation.<\/p>\n

To gain South Africans\u2019 trust again will be very difficult for the company, which does not bode well for its future prospects.<\/p>\n

The graph below shows Telkom\u2019s fixed-line subscriber decline over the last two decades, illustrating the effect of its poor reputation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now read: Telkom customer blacklisted after failing to pay cancelled account<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Telkom is its own worst enemy because of customer service which prevents subscribers from cancelling their service – and gets them blacklisted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":221525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[35,109],"class_list":["post-300470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-telecoms","tag-headline","tag-telkom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300470"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300470"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":300516,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300470\/revisions\/300516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}