Telkom Direct Store, Festival Mall! You rock!

<p>So, after almost a month of terrible service from Telkom, all over, I eventually walked into the Telkom Direct Store in the Festival Mall with my Telkom FLLA phone in my hand. I was there for the main purpose of throwing the phone in a dirtbin in the shop, closing my account and demanding a refund for the R700 that my account was in advance. </p> <p> </p> <p>There are many complaints on Hellopeter, Twitter and Facebook about this saga of bad service from Telkom. Also, many requests for service to 20210 and 20213. All to no avail. Not once did anyone at Telkom bother to solve the problem, or even communicate with me. After 16 years of excellent service from Telkom, this complete lack of customer care surprised and irritated me to a level where I, for the first time realised while some refer to this company as "Helkom".</p> <p> </p> <p>Back to the Telkom Direct Store. They received me in a professional, friendly and helpful manner. For the first time, someone showed any interest to try and resolve my problem. Although I was in a terrible mood and ready to fight, the attitude of the person who assisted me calmed me down, mainly because for the first time, I got a feeling that someone at Telkom was actually capable of resolving the issue. In the end, it took them 15 minutes or so to have the phone working perfectly. Compare 15 minutes to successful resolution to 3 - 4 weeks of being run around to no success! </p> <p> </p> <p>As an aside. I posted a sarcastic complaint on Hellopeter because this store does not have a phone before I even went there. The Social Media Team forwarded that to the store management as if I complained about their service. Guess what! The first (and only) call I ever received from Telkom was from the Store to enquire why I was unhappy and how they could help! The rest of Telkom, learn! That one call was worth more than a million messages starting with the copy and paste: "we apologise for the inconvenience ...."</p> <p> </p> <p>Telkom Management should send all customer facing staff to this store to go and learn what customer service is. Well done and thank you Telkom Direct, Festival Mall. </p>