PO
Peter O

1 reviews | Active since Dec 2011

28 Nov 2019, 11:30

Exorbant penalty fees from Telkom.

I had a contract with Telkom for 2 years, being two external modums (****les) on two different contracts. My pay date for this contract was last day of the month, although it was not clearly communicated with me, as I always believed that it was the first of the month. In October 2018, I went for an op, 01 October 2018. I checked my account to see if monies were in the account, as I knew that my accounts came of at that time, including Telkom. Seeing that the account was in a positive, FNB led me to believe that I had no problems ito payments, and in addition to this, I deposited a R1000 into the account on 01 October at about 1h30, just to make sure. I never received any notification from Telkom that the amount reversed at all, or the bank. On 20 October, I tranferred R500 into my account as I needed this to pay a hospital bill and lo and behold, Telkom comes and grabs R401 from the account. When I queried this with their call center, some cheeky consultant told me that Telkom charges R201 reveresed debit penalties and if my Debit ordered reversed,this was their greedy punishment, and they did not want to hear a thing. They waved their ******* contract in front of you as if though there is nothing you can do. My bajk charges were not even R10 for the reversal. Their fine print is not discussed with you when they are in a hurry to sign you up. In fact, on the evening of the sign up, the consultant was too in a hurry to get home, not explaining a thing to me about these penalties and charges. I had to learn about it this way. My bank, FNB too did not care about the fact that I was misled with the amounts in my account. So I lost the R201. Now, during July this year the same thing happened, where I paid the amount into their account on a Sunday, since that was the last day of the month, being in my contract. Because the money didn't process in time, it fell into the Monday, and guess what, they charged the R201 again. I removed them from my debit orders, and only made the normal payment the following month, making sure that their "penalties" were not taken off again. Cleverly, they cahnged the reference code and in September, they managed to politely help themselves to monies out of my account as my bank could not stop the reference code as it was different to the one that they used previously. I disputed the amount, and moved my money into my savings, where they could not get their filthy hands onto. I cancelled the contracts on 20 October, as the contract came to term. I was told by their branch staff to cancel at that time, one telling me the best time was the 20th Oct, another telling me 23rd Oct. I made full payment for a month (R201) for the contract on the 01 November for October, and on November 19 the service terminated. No more data. During November, in fact November 27, they took off an amount of R400 out of my account again, probably their final amount owing. When I went to their branch the evening, some cheeky consultant tells me that they issued me with the full service (although I tried to tell her that the service only went till November 19) but she kept babbling on about how she tells her customers that when they cancel their contracts, she tells them to cancel on the last day of the month to get their full benefits. Now, how is it that three different people tell you three different versions of cancellation? Being billed for the full month, and only servicing you for 3/4 month is a disservice to the customer. Telkom did not honour their deal, even thoguh they may argue that it is in the contract. I do intend going to the telecommunications Ombud with this, and challenge their predjudistic contract. I will never recommend anybody to go to Telkom for any contract. Read the fine print please people, before you sign that contract.

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