3 months and counting of frustration

I have been experiencing problems with my telephone line and ADSL for the last 3 or so months and after numerous faults logged and far too much time spent having technicians coming out to ‘attempt’ to fix things, I am still sitting with a problem. I have been paying full price the whole time with no rebate for any of the periods for which I was without connectivity. I have reached the end of my tether after having to spend most of Wednesday away work in order to attend to technicians trying to resolve the problem only to be told that it needs to be escalated. The fault was closed the next day despite nothing being done.

I cannot keep taking time off work to meet Telkom technicians who are unable to actually fix the problem. I cannot keep paying hundreds of Rands a month for a phone line that I can hardly ever use and internet that doesn’t even allow for basic browsing, checking emails etc. It is just not acceptable.

Below is an account of my experience.

1) Mid/late August – Phone line just went dead. Not exactly sure of the date it stopped working but after giving it a few days to come right I logged a fault on 28 August. A technician came out to ‘fix’ it on 31 August and apparently it was ‘resolved’.

2) 4 September – Same thing happened i.e. phone line was dead when I tried using it (again I’m not sure of exactly when it stopped working). I logged another fault. The same technician came out and ‘fixed’ it.

On both occasions I was told that the fault was due to an issue outside my home but not specifically where/what it was and why it was re-occurring.

3) 11 October – Phone line had dial tone but so noisy that you couldn’t even make a phone call. 15 October – Phone line was completely dead (as had happened before). ADSL was barely functioning. It’s always slow but was now not even allowing me to browse. Again I logged a fault and arrange for the technician (different person to previously) to meet me on 17 October. 17 October – Phone line started working again somehow before technician had arrived so cancelled the callout.

4) 29 October – Phone line had dial tone but so noisy that you couldn’t even make a phone call. Logged a fault of 30 October. I also sent an email using the Telkom website trying to explain the problem since the fault logging for doesn’t allow for any comment or info to be added - and have never gotten any response. 31 October – Phone line was completely dead again and ADSL was not working at all. 1 November - Same technician as dealt with in item 3 came to fix the fault. After a couple of hours he advised that the problem was actually with the exchange. Later that day I had to meet him again as he was still detecting a fault on the line and after another 1.5 hours I was informed that the phone and internet were ‘working again’ but that there was still a problem with the cabling. I have since learnt that this is probably the cause of all the problems – not sure why this was not picked up in the first place. The technician said he would escalate it to the cabling division. 2 November – Received an SMS saying the fault was resolved. Seriously? Did Telkom somehow gain access to my property the previous evening or that morning without my knowledge and fix things? When I checked that evening it was just as before i.e. the phone was ‘working’ but was still noisy and the internet was barely functioning. 3 November – I phoned Telkom to advise on the above and it doesn’t seem like anything was escalated to anyone as the fault was closed. Another fault has been logged - whatever help that might do...