An epic tale of cancelling a Telkom line

I cancelled my line 1 year and 3 months ago. Or no, I guess I tried to cancel my Telkom account.

The call centre said they can't cancel, I have to go to a store or email a cancellation. I tried emailing to 3 different email addresses that I could find online and on the cancellation form. One didn't exist, the other responded saying that they don't deal with cancellations and I should use another email address. This one existed but gave no response at all after I sent my cancellation form. I then rep**** back to the one that responded saying that I will stop payment since I assume that my service is cancelled, or at the very least I have gone through the reasonable efforts in trying to cancel. I took their complete silence as a slightly hurt, but resigned, agreement of such. And I understand to some extent. If you are one of a kind, the last of your kind, you want to be needed. You need to be wanted.

But alas, we have to move on sometime or another and it's not you, it's me, and thanks for the periods of stable internet, those were some of our finest, and I never blamed you for your temperament - you were an old beast made for a younger world. And really, simply, I was moving out of my house so this had to end. So I stopped payment, and lo and behold someone from Telkom suddenly appeared on the scene - in the form of an attorney. I relayed my whole story to the attorney. She said that it has been escalated to cancellations and she has been instructed to close the file. The gods be good. She added that I should follow up with cancellations and stated an email address for them. I duly did as instructed, in real and sincere English words fit for children. It might surprise some, but the subsequent, and to date absolute, lack of response didn't surprise me at the time.

But then another attorney two months later. Same thing. I point her to the old attorney's correspondence and that is the end of that. No worries, fam, we're good. People make mistakes. I don't go around begging for apologies, I move on: there is a long life to live, mysteries to solve (why are we here? how even?), money to earn and squander, people to meet and disappoint.

A few peaceful months pass. The mentioned events start to pass from memory, replaced by the joys and tribulations of life - all moderated by the lack of true content or aggressive untreatable parasites that modern society has afforded us. But alas, like all things, this is temporary. A brief stasis, known only after the fact and only for its absence. It starts with an itch. An SMS from NuDebt inviting you to chat about outstanding Telkom accounts. You ignore it. The itch spreads. Soon it is an inflamed mess - calls from Alice, calls from Thabo, calls from Denver who all assure you they are there to help you. But I don't need help, you see. I just want peace. I want to get excited about noises my phone makes, I want some mystery - did she say yes? is my order on its way? are they going to buy something from me - but it is all too fami**** now. Answer the phone, 3 seconds of silence and then 'good morning, this is *** form nudebt, can I speak to mr * please' 'this is him' 'you are speaking to *** from nudebt regarding your outstanding telkom account...' and here we go again. I have now been told that the only person working the account is X, then Y phones me and I ask them about that and they say 'don't worry, sir, I am now the only person working your account.' Then X phones me and I ask the same and they tell me the same. And so it goes. We speak a little more often than most of my colleagues and me. And all of my family. And similarly we repeat the same conversations time and time and time again. We're always having fun, but it's boring now because it's always the same, 'you owe us money, please pay' 'I don't so I wont' 'haha okay, but pay us' 'haha no' 'haha but then we'll have to sue' 'haha sue me.' But they don't.

So this is my life now.