A booooo for Telkom

I, have had numerous problems with the new Telkom fibre instrument. Firstly, I was contacted by a Telkom agent and advised that they would be replacing my existing Telkom landline instruments with a cordless fibre telephone for R299 per month. The reason was that they were replacing all copper cable phones due to cable theft. No alternative plans were offered to me. The instrument was delivered by courier, and it was left to me to decipher how to use this new phone. A manual provided has such small font, bad English, and incomprehensible instructions that it was impossible to decipher.

I then got an email informing me that there were several different plans available starting at R 199 per month, with included 2 gigs of data – which is quite sufficient for me as I have data on my PC. It has taken me 3 months to get the plan migrated to a lower level.

However, international calls are blocked, and calls incoming and outgoing are suddenly cut off, or can only be heard on speaker phone.

I was advised by Telkom Sales 10213 to go to a Telkom shop, which I did, and where they explained why calls couldn’t be heard with the handset. I also filled in a very badly photocopied form to request that they “unbar” international calls. I don’t know why they are barred in the first place.

However, to my knowledge, Telkom has not “unbarred” international calls, and I still get cut off, or have to go to speaker phone when I have a sudden silence on the handset.

My biggest complaint, however, is that one can have only one instrument in the house. Whereas previously I had 3 instruments throughout the house and could answer and access calls anywhere, I now have only one, and cannot hear it if I am not in the immediate vicinity of the phone.

All in all, this new phone is one huge flop. Nothing works, I can’t get help, although I’ve tried, and I cannot speak on the phone knowing that I am still being heard. Most often I am not. Nought out of ten for Telkom.