No LTE service for over 1 week, and Telkom seem not to care at all about helping resolve!

My LTE service at home went down last weekend. I was aware that my contract was coming to an end, but assumed that service would continue at pay-as-you-go service following this. When My service died at the end of the month, I thought this could be the issue. I called the Telkom helpline 081 180. After waiting for some time on to speak to a consultant, I asked to please update/renew my contract to resume my service. I was told by the consultant that this was not something they could help me with and that I would need to call another number 081 182 for renewals. I asked if he was able to either put me through to someone or request that someone call me back. I was told this was not possible.

After another long wait of 25min or so on hold, I got through to a consultant. This consultant then informed me that they too were unable to help me and that I needed to go to a store. I responded, that I had originally taken this contract online, and have never been required to visit a store, so asked if online was also an option. He agreed that I could upgrade my contract online too, but again, was unable to assist me with a call-back or transfer. Late that day, I tried to do an upgrade online and was unable to do so. I chatted to a consultant online, who (no surprise) was unable to assist me, and instructed me to call sales on 10213, and that the online was actually down and would I would not be able to complete this process. (I suspect that the previous consultant was trying to divert me to the store to compensate for knowing that I was unable to complete this process online).

So... I managed to get a gap to head to a store, which I thought would be the best solution. After assessing my profile (the first time I assume this was done throughout this process), the consultant informed me that my service was still active and that this was, in fact, a technical fault restricting my service. But he then, as with all his colleagues before, informed me he was unable to assist me, and that I should now call technical services for assistance.

So I again fueled up my personal Vodacom account with enough airtime to stay on hold for a few hours and called the technical line as advised. After about 35min on hold, I got through to a consultant, who after a short time informed me that in fact, Telkom services are down and that I would have to simply wait a little while for them to resume. "How long should I wait", I enquired, as I was now coming on 5 days without service, he suggested 24 - 48 hours would be good. So here I write this review, 48hours+ after this last call to Telkom, 7 days+ without a service I am paying for. Hundreds of minutes used on my personal phone line, and hundreds of megabytes used with personal hotspots later.

Telkom. I suggest you start to communicate better with your customers. Please, can someone address this issue?