Extremely bad service from Telkom

<p>As I previously reported on hellopeter, my drama with Telkom started in October 2016 when I handed my cell phone in for repairs. Since then my cell phone has been sent to the repair center and back to The Glen branch a few times, unrepaired. The last time I went into the Glen branch I was told the phone had been given to the wrong person but it was returned and was back at the repair center and would be delivered to The Glen store on that Friday. Eight weeks had passed by this time, still no phone. After many emails to all the managers I could find still nothing was done so I evem emailed the CEO. He sent my email on to his 'team' and the last i have heard from them was on 5th December. The repair center then sends an SMS to say the phone will cost R5294.62 to fix as 'it does not boot up or charge'! The phone was handed in because the screen turned pink and green and I was told by a tech at the Apple iStore that is usually just a loose connection and simple to fix. So now after eight weeks of my phone being missing, travelling back and forth between the Glen branch and the repair center plus being given to the wrong customer it does not work at all! On the day I handed my phone in the gentleman assisting me could hear the message alerts coming through as well as the phone ringing but the screen was different colours! I have repeatedly appealed to everyone at Telkom to give me a new phone as I cannot be held responsible for any damage that must have occured during the eight weeks I did not have my phone! When my phone originally went missing, The Glen branch said the repair center had it and the repair center said The Glen branch had it so I asked for a new phone OR to have my contract cancelled so that I would be free to go to another service provider and get a new phone. Any emails I received from Telkom just said they 'would escalate this enquiry'. It has now been almost nine weeks this has been going on. My debit order has been deducted three times during all this so I am paying for something I don't have. Repeated pleading has fallen on deaf ears, it appears that not one single person at Telkom actually cares about this. Checking the statistics just on hellopeter, 22,744 people have made a report in the last 365 days about Telkom, the average rating is two stars! How bad is that? Still no one cares. Telkom was once a giant in the business world but I'm sorry to say that this is no longer true, it has become a joke of a company. Obviously reports like this don't worry them, I have ranted on Facebook about my problems with Telkom and I have over 500 FB friends, a lot of them have responded to my rants so this has shown up on their FB timeline as well. Being a dance teacher with over 85 students and not being able to be in contact with them or their parents during this time has affected my business to say nothing of the fact that this subject was spoken about at our recent prize giving event, so 450 guests also heard all about Telkom. Everyone in my church now knows about my problems with Telkom so that is another 400 plus people who will want nothing to do with Telkom. I will be writing to the newspapers as well but it seems not even this worries Telkom! The sad thing is my contract ends at the end of February 2017 so if Telkom had agreed to cancel my contract they would not lose any money! This has been one of the worst experiences of my life and I will warn everyone I know about Telkom.</p>