A nightmare trying to stop Telkom from incorrectly debiting my account

Summary: I had 3 products (2 sim+phone and 1 Internet) on contract. When my contracts reached their terms (expired), I cancelled my products through Telkom website (as I was told by a Telkom representative). On May 30 2018, I received confirmation via email of my cancel requests for all products with their reference numbers. Telkom has continued to debit my account for two of the products since then every month. I have made numerous calls on a monthly basis to Telkom to try and get this resolved, I have written emails and even desperately wrote to their social media team on Facebook to try and get help. None of these have helped as Telkom continued to debit my account. Despite finally getting written confirmation that my accounts have finally been cancelled in November, my account has been debited again. __________________________________________________________

Full Details:

I had 3 products with Telkom. I sent through a cancellation request when the contracts came to an end. I received email responses for ALL three products confirming my cancellation request on 30 May 2018.

I noticed that I was still being billed and debited for 2 products after this so I thought that it was due to the one-month-notice policy. When I was billed again in August, I called into customer service on 3 September 2018. The customer agent told me that she has logged in the request (to cancel and look into a refund) and that I will get a call within 48 hours. I did not receive the call.

I noticed that I was still being billed and debited, so I called in again 8 October 2018. I was told again that my request has been logged (escalated) and promised a call within 48 hours. No such call came.

I called again early November to follow up on this since I was still being billed and debited. Shockingly, I was told that my products would only be cancelled if I paid what I was owing for November. When I objected that this makes no sense since they were debiting my account already, I was told that my request has been logged (escalated) and promised a call within 48 hours. No such call came.

On 12 Nov I received an email confirming that 2 products had been changed (one cancelled, and the other changed to prepaid). I called in asking for a refund for the months that I was billed incorrectly. I was promised a call within 48 hours. No such call came.

I phoned in on the 21 November to check up on the status of the case. I was told that the matter will be referred to billing. I was promised a call within 72 hours. No such call came.

I called in on the 29 November and was told that the case was closed on the 26 November and billing had rejected my refund request with the reason “client has not provided proof of cancellation”. I disputed this with the agent (Bonolo Sauli) who was helping me because I had provided this “proof” 4 times already and it was reflecting on my profile, which she confirmed. She consulted with her manager who advised her to look into my statements to check “usage” during the disputed months. She did so and told me that only October and November show no usage. I asked her to send me the statements that she was looking at so I could verify since I had not used these SIM cards since July. She sent me the statements via email. According to her statements which corresponded with mine: * - August showed usage of 1MB (and no phone usage) * - September showed no usage (phone or internet) * - October shows no usage (phone or internet) * - November shows no usage (phone or internet)

We got cut abruptly and I called in. After the long wait, I reached someone else who asked me to start again because the case number ( ********** 5) reflects that the matter is closed, rejected by billing because I did not give proof of cancellation. I started to explain the story again but we got cut again. I've responded to the email that Bonolo sent me the statements on without any response.

This morning, I received notification that Telkom has debited my account again.

Conclusion:

Each call that I’ve made to Telkom on this matter has been longer that 50minutes and I feel like I am not making progress. I have been promised that someone will call me and not once has anyone called me or answered my emails. I believe that I have reasonably exhausted the channels that Telkom has put in place to resolve this dispute to no avail. I don't know what else to do.