I never believed the bad press about Telkom until I experienced it personally

In December 2019 my Telkom landline and ADSL stopped working. I was told it was an outage in my area and notfied that the problem had been resolved - except that I still had no service. In store, an assistant logged a fault and pay dispute so I didn't pay for December. It's now January 2021 and my landline and internet is still dead. I've repeatedly logged faults, credit disputes and made complaints. I've used the app, online self-service, email and called the service centre. All I got were texts to say that my issue was resolved when clearly nothing had been done. In October 2020, after being called by debt collectors, I was assured by the Telkom service centre that my account would be cancelled and the entire balance credited. Now Telkom's debt collectors are hounding me again. The cancellation didn't happen despite another useless text confirming my issue had been "resolved". Am I supposed to end up with a bad credit record because Telkom thinks they can charge people for services that were never provided? I always thought people exaggerated their bad experiences with Telkom, but now that I've experienced it personally I can see why customers are leaving Telkom for greener pastures.