TELKOM DEBITS FOR A CANCELLED SERVICE

Please be very careful before subscribing to any service with Telkom or any of it's divisions. Once you have subscribed and have thereby agreed to a monthly debit order, all Telkom employees become unreachable, no department is able to assist you and customer service becomes non-existent.

My partner and I subscribed to a mobile wifi ****le deal that a telephonic sales agent contacted us about. The sales agent did not check whether the device would have coverage in our area. When it arrived via courier, it was opened and turned on but it did not work. Telkom's call center was phoned and we were informed the device had to be sent back as it did not have coverage in our area. During this call we mentioned that the sales agent never informed us that this was a factor that needed to be considered. Also take note that nothing was mentioned about a cancellation form that was to be completed. We were just told to return the device to its box as a courier would collect it the following day.

The device was repackaged in its original box and the following day the courier collected the device from our home. This was one day after receiving the device.

At the end of the month we received an invoice for the device that the courier had collected from our home. The invoice stated that the monthly fee would be debited at the end of September.

After numerous phone calls to the call center, no one could assist us. We were transferred from one uninformed person to the next. Eventually someone said that they would investigate the matter, probably just to get us off the line, and we trusted that the matter would be resolved. Again nothing was mentioned about a cancellation form.

The debit orders went off for a few months, each time we phoned the call center, each time we got another poor answer and an empty promise that the matter would be investigated.

We tried visiting the Blouberg branch and we were told they could not assist as we signed up with a telephone sales agent... How is this possible??

Eventually when we phoned again, we were told there is a cancellation form outstanding. The lady promised to email it to my partner, it was never sent.

We had to phone again after a few days and miraculously we received the form, completed it and sent it back. We were notified by a "no-reply" address that the form may take up to 3 weeks to process.

At the end of that month, after 21 days had passed, we were invoiced again. And again the debit went off.

We have emailed to all email addressed we could find - no one ever replies. We have logged complaints on the Telkom website - we have never received a call-back. We have tried using the chat function on the Telkom website - the person who assisted us gave an email address, guess what? She has never rep**** to any message sent to her. We have tried the Facebook messenger option - we were told to email the document and all correspondence to ********** . No one ever responded. We sent another message and were told to forward the correspondence again. This time the email was returned automatically because Telkom's mailbox was full... We kept trying to send it and again no one rep****. Today we sent another message on Facebook and we were again asked to send the SAME correspondence to another email address. We received a reply on Facebook saying that Telkom cannot cancel the service before the amount due is paid... HELLO thats the whole point. We have been reversing the debits because we refuse to pay for a device we do not have and a service which was not cancelled because Telkom employees were not doing their jobs.

This is a nightmare. It has been 9 months now and we have been invoiced for the device every month, on time. Funny how Telkom never forgets to send your invoice on time, but cannot assist you in cancelling a service that was wrongfully sold to you by an uninformed employee.

I have been avoiding this forum for months as I believed that we would be able to resolve the matter through one of the other channels that Telkom has for complaints. But to no avail.

I do not even expect to get anywhere with this review as I'm sure Telkom is happy as long as they can debit our hard earned money, they couldn't care less what the public thinks.