Avoid Telkom - especially the Telkom Direct Store in the Eikestad Mall in Stellenbosch!!!

I walked into the Telkom Direct store in the Eikestad Mall in Stellenbosch with a query for the first time on 21 Sept already - and advised the floor manager there, Mr Jowen Michaels, that I already complained about the problem publicly via Hello Peter - a problem that I've had since Aug (dropping calls and sms's not going through) on 3 Sept (as my line couldn't hold a call long enough to wait through the "we are always experiencing higher than normal call volumes" ordeal in trying to get through to their call centre") - but then I simply received the empty promise "we are so sorry about the inconvenience but will get back to your shortly" - which also never happened.

Mr Michaels then please explained that "this is definitely not the standard of service that telkom aspires to and that they are in fact much better than this and promised to personally take care of the matter - a process that he claimed takes 72 hours to complete - and that he will personally get back to me within 72 hours - which also didn't happen as I had to contact him from my side 4 days later - he then rep**** and said that their IT section was working on the problem and that he would get back to me on the same day - which also didn't happen...

8 days later - on 3 Oct - after still having not heard back from Mr Michaels or anyone else at Telkom - I contacted him yet again to follow up on the problem - this time he responded by saying "Our I.T. closed your case already and your profile is sorted?" - this having been done 1. Without anyone from the IT dept having contacted me at any stage to even hear what the exact problems were and 2. Without anyone first contacting me to hear if the problems were indeed resolved before simply going ahead and closing the case?!

I then went back to the store to inform Mr Michaels in person that this clearly isn't good enough as the fact that someone in the IT dept clearly isn't doing his/her job correctly is now costing me more time, frustration as well as money as I use my phone as a business phone - and that by not following up on this Telkom is simply letting their employees getting away with this kind of pathetic service (which I've come to realize unfortunately is just the sad standard throughout the company!) - and I thus asked him to please make sure that the management of the IT dept follows up on this to make sure that they can nail down the person responsible for this. He then just shrugged of my suggestions with a "this is the system and there's nothing more we can do about it" kind of attitude. I then also asked him for the store's regional managers contact details so that I can then at least personally follow up on this with him/her in case they're not going to do anything about it themselves - but he told me that "he's not allowed to provide me with the regional managers" contact details - even though just before I went to discuss this with him I asked one of his colleagues in the store where I can get the regional managers's details from and the colleague then told me that Mr Michaels was the only person in the store at the time who could provide it to me..?

Needless to say - and as I told Mr Michaels would be the case on 3 Oct already as he simply did the exact same thing that didn't work the first time round again but expected a different result - it's now 24 Oct - more than a month after he told me that he would personally see to it that the problem gets dealt with within 72 hours - and almost 8 weeks after I brought the (urgent) matter under Telkom's attention via a public platform - and I'm still sitting with a poor line that drops calls and gives problems with sms's not going through - and yet at the end of each month I still get a Telkom debit order painfully deducted from my account from which the people not doing their jobs effectively are getting paid!

The cherry on the top is that I've since also brought the matter under a supervisor at the call centre, Mr Luthando Ngcobo as well as the store manager at the Telkom Direct store in the Eikestad Mall's urgent attention a couple of weeks ago already - and even though I've made it very clear that this has been an ongoing problem that clearly isn't going to get solved by simply "following the system" - and that it thus clearly needs a real "manager" (not as in by job description only but someone who ACTUALLY SOLVES PROBLEMS and not merely convey the same problems over and over to people not capable of changing anything - but then still hoping for the problems to magically go away) - nothing has since been done to escalate the matter any higher up. The IT dept did contact me last week to setup a meeting with a technician for him to come and "test my phone in person" - however this test turned out being a 15 second check of my settings - which was OBVIOUSLY already done right at the beginning when I started experiencing these problems, i.e. it doesn't have anything to do with the settings and it can also not be coverage related - unless there isn't adequate coverage right in the middle of Stellenbosch in the Telkom Direct store itself?! I made this very clear before "setting up the meeting with the technician" - however even after the technician then met me in Bellville - where I often work and have also been experiencing many dropped calls - confirmed that there was indeed adequate coverage there - as there is supposed to be in that area - he then still told me that "the system" now requires him to drive from Bellville to where I stay in Stellenbosch to also go and test the coverage there... where is the logic in this process? I'll tell you where - these technicians are outsourced by Telkom - i.e. more kms, bigger invoices... and who pays for that... the sucker who can't even make proper phone calls from his Telkom line!

What a big fat joke of a company! What pathetic management! What utter lack of any logic being app**** in "their system"! What ******** customer "care"! Why would anyone on earth want to support a company like this... don't be fooled by their "lowest costs" marketing schemes... lower costs doesn't mean anything if you end up not being able to make proper phone calls!