Telkom Sucks Again. I hate it.
Jan16Written by:
2009/01/16 12:22 PM
Don't you just hate Telkom. Oh how I wish there were some one else to use. Unfortunately Neotel is not in our area yet.
Don't you just hate Telkom. Oh how I wish there were some one else to use. Unfortunately Neotel is not in our area yet.
My internet has been down for two days. Apparently I ran out of bandwidth. Now that's another story. How on earth did I run out of bandwidth in the middle of the month. I an very careful about my internet usage. I tried to do a audit trail, but all I got wa a proxy address. So how on earth do I prove or disprove my internet usage. But that's for another blog...
Anyway, two days ago my internet went down. No bandwidth. So I proceed to the Telkomsa.net website to purchase more bandwidth. Only to find that my access was denied. I could not purchase any bandwidth. So I tried to go to the telkom.co.za site. I was successful there. But soon realised that that was the only site I could browse.
So I got onto the phone to the Telkom support. After an hour and many run arounds, I came away no wiser than that I was an hour ago when I first made the support call. No one could tell me why I could not go into the telkomsa.net site. You could hear the inexperienced call centre operators reading from a pre defined set of manuals and procedures. None of which could correctly diagnose my problem
After many hours of phaffing around I found out that I had a proxy set-up in my browsers. Well, I never found out by mistake I knew that it was set-up like that. The only problem is that it was a saix proxy. Now shouldn't that work. Its a Telkom company, based in SA, so local bandwidth should allow me to use it. The proxy address being "dsl-cache.saix.net".
Once I deleted the proxy address and disabled all proxy setting, I was able to at least browse to the telkomsa.net site. But my troubles did not stop there. I tried to purchase more bandwidth. Top up in other words. But after I put in my credit card details and proceed to the final step, I got an server 500 error message.
So I waited 30 minutes and tried again. But before I purchased more bandwidth I checked to see if the transaction was a success or not by checking my top up history, Clearly it there were no transactions. But still same error message in the same place. At the last step. I tried this a few times without success.
I then phoned Telkom support. I was called back by the Telkom automatic phone system. I then proceed to explain the problem, when I was redirected to billing. Which I was transferred to. After waiting in the queue for over an hour I eventually got through to a lady, who said that the only way I can purchase more bandwidth was to get a new user account costing R79. I thought this was a cheek as the normal price is R64 when bought through the telkomsa.net's site. But this was not working at the moment.
I got pushed from pillar to post and was eventually promised a call back by a supervisor or a technical person. I was also promised that the problem was escalated.
No such call back arrived. The next morning, this morning actually, I tried to purchase more bandwidth. But found that the problem persisted. Once again I got on to the Telkom support. After waiting another few minutes. Surprising but it was 08h00, I got through, but was transferred to billing again. Billing said that they could only help me if I purchased the new user account at the cost of R79. I explained to them that this is not what I wanted. I wanted the problem fixed and I wanted to pay the normal R64. I was then re-routed to their technical department.
The technical guy came on the phone and after explaining the problem to him. Something which I had done about 20 times over the last two days, he said that he could not help me. In fact he referred me back to billing.
By this time I was so frustrated and angry I was about to rip the phone off the wall and murder someone. Don't you hate this. You can't get good service. You can't find a competent person. You can't close your account and move to another provider. What do you do?
I went back to the billings department. Another ten minutes off explaining the problem to a different call centre operator went by. By this time I was nearly screaming down the phone to the poor man on the other side.
Fortunately he was rather calm about this. While I was on the line he requested some other technical people to test the top-up module. After he tested it, they came back saying nothing was wrong. Now what? I was about to erupt. They said that I should wait a bit and try again in five minutes. I have been trying for the last 24 hours, what's another five minutes gong to do. A server error does not just rectify itself. I know this because I am in the IT industry myself. I normally use that line when I am resetting a server or module because of some fault somewhere.
Anyway I went back to my pc opened up Firefox and tried again. No guesses as to what happened. So to calm down I waited the proposed five minutes. I had breakfast and a cup of coffee.
After calming down, I went back to my PC, but this time opened up IE. I tried again, and surprise it worked.
Now what was the problem Why did it take two days to get working. Was it my browser, Firefox? Was it in fact a Telkom problem that when they reset something it worked.? We will never know. I must say this, that I never received a server 500 error on one browser and not on another.
I just HATE Telkom, and wish, oh so wish I could go somewhere else.
I would be interested to know if you have experienced something similar. What other dealings or problems have you had with regards to Telkom? Let us know by dropping us a comment.
blog comments powered by 2 comment(s) so far...
Re: Telkom Sucks Again. I hate it.
Another war story to add to some of yours.
I lost a few of my smaller customers between August last year and now, par for the course at the moment it seems.
These small customers would due to pressure from us pay at the end of each month.
The bigger customers we are left with are “corporate” and as such pay us by the 15th of the month or pretty much when they like.
This has created a month-start cash flow problem for us that all our debit orders go off at the beginning of the month.
This eventually caught up with us at the end of Dec where we had bounced our Telkom bill. (R1000)
My wife and accountant called Telkom and told them we would pay on the 15th of the month when we got paid.
No don’t pay now; we will double debit you at the end of the month…but we won’t be able to…. Sorry that the only way….
You can guess what happens next; the next debit goes off and bounces at the end of the month we now owe Telkom R2000.00 and our line is switched off.
Hey I have 3G and the Telkom lines are generally crap after each rainfall so I guess I will just cancel the lines, pay the bill and be rid of snap, crackle and pop for good…. Maybe look at Neotel when they cover my area.
So I phone Telkom to cancel my line, only to be told that I can’t cancel the line until the balance is paid off.
Ok fair enough … but now the lady tells me the balance is not the R2100.00 I owe, but there is now R4200.00 due as there is a reconnection deposit and this months rental (for the disconnected service).
If I don’t pay the R4200 I cant get my line switched off or back on.
I don’t want the line back so why do I need to pay a deposit and why should I pay for the line rental that I don’t have (it’s off after all)
Sorry for you we are Telkom and that’s our rules, we can waiver the deposit but you still have to pay everything up before we can cancel the line.(R3200)
Oh and once you have paid up you need to give us a months notice before we can switch you off.
Ok so I pay the 3 months (for 2 months service) and am then committed to another month of service, another R1000.00 for the notice.
Ok so I think I’ve got it now.R3200.00 now and R1000 at the end of the month and I am rid of Telkom.Yipee!!
So I ask can I use the Telkom line during the Notice month …simple question.
Yes of course, but you will have to get your line reconnected which means another R980 deposit.
If I knew this was that complicated I would never had asked for the service in the first place …Oh I forgot they have (had) a monopoly.
I would advise all your clients to get out while they can.
I would hate to think what would happen if we did not have the R4000.00, by the end of the year it would be R14000.00
Not sure if what Telkom is doing is legal, but I am about to go up on my roof in the rain and pluck the lines out of my building and find somewhere dark to put them(Telkoms CEO’s butt perhaps).
Alternatively I will use them to put up a Neotel banner across my driveway.
By ferd on
2009/02/26 07:18 PM
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Re: Telkom Sucks Again. I hate it.
Fred, I feel your Pain. How can Telkom charge you to cancel a line that is disconnected anyway, seems pretty weird to me. BTW, if you do take the cable and do you know what to the CEO, I would write him a bill of 14000 for doing that, then 14000 to have it removed, then 14000 to remove it after it has been removed. By Robert Bravery on
2009/02/26 07:22 PM
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