My Telkom Nightmare

<p>One day I received a phone call from a telesales agent. The product being promoted was Telkom's LTE WiFi which consisted of a Huawei B593 router with 20gig day / 20gig night for R399pm. At that time Telkom's uncapped LTE was not yet available in my area and 20gig was the max I could get. So I figured this was a good deal and decided to sign up. A few months later I had learned that Telkom now offered uncapped LTE in my area. I wondered if it was possible for me to upgrade my contract, so I phoned Telkom's sales department to enquire. The agent advised me that it was possible to migrate and redirected me to a site to apply for a ticket number. After receiving my ticket number I was contacted by a sales agent. I explained my situation to her and specifically asked if there would be any cancellation fees involved and stated that if there were I would not be interested in going ahead with the migration. She reassured me that there would be no such fees involved and that I would only have to pay prorata on the first month's installment. Perfect. She then advised me that a new router would have to be installed and I was to phone Telkom's sales department on the day I receive the new router to complete the migration. A few days later the new router arrived, this was when my Telkom nightmare began. I bought R80 airtime and made the call to Telkom's sales department. After being on hold for 15mins I got through to a sales agent who was unable to assist me stating that this was a matter for their accounts department. The agent proceeded to transfer my call and after another 10mins of being on hold my R80 airtime was exhausted. I then made contact with Telkom via their Facebook page, I was advised that a technical team had been tasked to assist me. After 3 days without hearing from anyone I decided to contact Telkom's customer services who were unable to assist me and advised me to go into a Telkom store. I then made my way to the Telkom store in Westville. After waiting in a line for 45mins a consultant gave me a phone and told me to contact their accounts department. After a lengthy explanation of my situation, the agent asked me to hold while she discussed the case with her superior. She returned only to state that I did NOT qualify for migration because my initial contract was still too new, that I would be liable to pay cancellation fees. Wait a minute. I was told there would be no cancellation fees involved, that this was an upgrade, a migration? Why should I be liable when I was given false information? The agent responsible for misleading me should be liable. After hearing this I told the agent that I no longer wanted the uncapped contract, she then advised that I would be liable to pay early cancellation fees. I was furious. She then attempted to transfer my call to another department but I was unable to get through. I phoned Telkom sales department again - like I was originally told to do upon receipt of the router - I told my story again and this time the agent seemed to understand my situation and said not to worry that he will complete the migration for me. Finally it's over! I get home, the old sim no longer works, the new one does. That month I was charged my normal instalment of R399. The following month I was charged the prorata installment which was +/- R850. Then for 3 months thereafter I was charged my new installment of R599. Everything seems to be going accordingly until 4 months after the "migration" Telkom takes an installment of R1487. This completely caught me off guard. Almost every time I had previously spoken to an agent they would ask me security questions, one of those questions was "how do you receive your statements?" Every time my answer would be: "I don't receive my statements" but nothing was ever done about it. I then phoned Telkom to enquire about the installment only to find out that they had charged me cancellation fees! I then explained that this was supposed to be a migration, and I was told there would be no cancellation fees. The agent then logged a case and said someone would contact me within 72 hours. After 4 days without hearing from anyone I sent Telkom a message on Facebook. They said they would follow up with their account support team and get back to me. 5 days later I receive a message stating that my case has been escalated to their billing team and someone will "be in touch" with me. Because of the unexpected deduction from Telkom I was left with insufficient budget to make it through the month, and I was forced to make debt. Another 9 days pass and I'm still sitting in the dark waiting to be contacted. I send another message to Telkom on Facebook. They reply stating that their cancellation team are handling the case and further correspondence will follow. I have been caused a significant amount of stress throughout this ordeal and I've given Telkom the benifit of the doubt most of the way, but I've simply had enough.</p>