Horrified! Begging Telkom for 5 years to cancel line

At the end of 2013 I contacted Telkom to cancel my landline contract (callmore package), as my new house did not have a fixed line and I was planning to emigrate soon thereafter. The phone number is ********** 959 I went through the necessary processes at the time, and was confident that all was in order.

I returned at the beginning of October 2017, only to find that my local bank account has been dutifully debited each month by Telkom despite me cancelling this line 4 YEARS AGO!!!

I made exhaustive trips to the local Telkom store- so much so that the staff knew me personally- and contacted 10210 repeatedly demanding that this line is cancelled and my money refunded. I’ve lost count of the number of reference numbers I received, only to be told on follow up that someone will get back to me... which never happened. Eventually, after two months of almost daily calls, I received a vague sms that the issue has been resolved. I am rather remorseful that I interpreted it as Telkom cancelling my line. Conveniently, I’ve been stonewalled about a refund, and to that effect, I simply gave up at that point. I left SA in December 2017 believing that this travesty was over.

I’ve returned to SA again in October 2018, and history has repeated itself. This time, I’ve received an invoice for approximately R2500 owing to Telkom( I changed my banking details last year and Telkom, thankfully, couldn’t get access to it), and a quaint sms that MY LINE HAS BEEN SUSPENDED! That means Telkom had went right back to billing me since my request to cancel the line in October 2017! I have been marveling at the message: my line has been SUSPENDED in October 2018! Wow! You finally suspended a line that I’ve been begging to have cancelled 5 years ago! IT IS DOWNRIGHT DEROGATORY AND MACHIAVELLIAN THE WAY YOU HAVE TREATED ME! What sort of perverse pleasure you take in treating a customer this way? Is there some sort of lifetime contract that I’ve been locked into? What special ritual do I have to perform to free myself of your clutches? How dare you bill me for 5 years and not take responsibility for it? How dare you feel entitled to money that is not yours despite me clearly trying to stop you from continuing this? You only need to look at the numbers dialed out or received from my phone number to see that it has been lying dormant since 2013. You only have to look at my residential address to see that it doesn’t even have a fixed line installed. I demand that my line cancellation is backdated to 2013. I now demand for a refund of all the money you have ****** from my account. I’ve heard of complaints that haven’t been resolved for months...but half a decade!!!??? NB: seeing that Telkom can’t even discern the difference between a line cancellation and suspension, please do let me know if I need to explain any of the jargon ( sorry...I mean words) used above!