Telkom, You're Fired!

I know that it is often fashionable to criticize Telkom, but my recent experience dealing with them, beggars belief.

Our company offices are moving location and I needed to cancel the phone connection at the old office and get a new line installed at the new offices. Having been through this process before, I knew that one needs to send a signed fax to Telkom requesting this change, which I did. However a week and half later and the old line still not cancelled, I decided to phone their call centre. Big mistake!

As usual, as soon as I had worked my way through all the menu options, I got Telkom’s irritating music and the canned voice that informed me of their apparent high call volume and that there was a 10 minutes wait for the call to be answered. However I was given the option to use the Call Back service where Telkom would call me back once I was in front of the queue.

Deciding that I did not have 10 minutes to waste I entered my phone number into their system expecting to get a called back once in front of the queue. However 4 minutes later my phone rang and the canned voice informed me that it was Telkom’s Call back service. "Wow" I thought that was quick and I accepted the call.

But my admiration was short lived. As soon as I had accepted the call I was put on hold again, listening to their irritating music once again which went on and on and on for 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes … by which time I was really fed up. The whole point of using and PAYING for the Call Back service was to allow me to be at the front of the queue with no delay. But the best was yet to come…

After 20 minutes I decided to end the call but guess what, I could not! Putting the receiver failed to end the call and my line was held "captive" by this Telkom call for approximately 50 minutes – talk about an innovative money-making-scheme.

I phoned the call centre back again once the call had dropped and after another 20 minute wait complained to the person at the other end about the problem experienced. But despite her reassurances that she would report the problem and someone would get back to me, we all know nobody at Telkom really cares and nobody was going to do anything - I am still waiting for someone to get back to me of course.

At Telkom, nobody gives a damm it would seem and there is nothing we can do about it except grin and bear it - for now. I long for the day that we have a real competitor. I think only once they start losing customers in droves will they start worrying about customer service and the fact that it takes so long to get anything done using their call center service.

Unfortunately I don’t really see Neotel as a worthy alternative. Their introduction to the market has been so inefficient and slow and doesn't inspire confidence that they will be any better. I long for the day that South Africans have a real telecoms alternative and we can collectively say, “Telkom, you’re fired”!