Telkom - Frustrating to impossible line cancellation

<p>We moved house and because I was quite on the ball, I cancelled our Telkom line (or so I thought) by following their requirements and completing the cancellation form and emailing this and my ID to ********** All was successfully sent as I received a confirmation of receipt email stating that someone would contact me within 21-days. This email was dated 23 May 2016. As my ADSL ISP account, for which I had the Telkom line installed, and line was with MWEB, once the contract with them was cancelled, they would end my contract with them and transfer the line part of the account to Telkom, who would then be able to finalise the line cancellation. As we were still on our old house until the middle of July, that is when we decided to have the account transferred back to Telkom, which was duly done by MWEB.</p> <p> </p> <p>I contacted Telkom to confirm that, due to my cancellation email being sent early, would I need to re-submit, to which the operator at the call centre said I would not and that once the line had been returned by MWEB to Telkom, the cancellation letter would take effect immediately and that I would not owe any more money, after the end of July. Well, I thought great, no need to concern myself any further. I subsequently received a bill from Telkom, saying I owed them the amount for the line rental, in August; I knew I would have the bill payable to the end of July. I called them up and the operator said not to worry, she is sure it will be being handled and that I should disregard the bill. I duly followed this. I then received a new bill in August! Frustrated at this point with having to call them so many times, I was told to please resend the cancellation letter. I thought this would be fruitless sending directly to the cancellation email, so told the operator I would email it to her, who must reply to my email stating she had received the email. I did and she responded via email, stating 'Please note this has been received and escallated.'; this email was dated 16 August 2016, to one Khanyisile Yaka. Once again, hoping this was now resolved, I left it alone. In September, I then received another email with a fresh bill for that month and the previous months. I could feel my blood boiling at this point and my blood pressure rising! I called the call centre, who now said that the line had been cancelled, but it had been re-created. I was astounded and asked who had authorised the line creation as I has not, nor had my tenant who is in the house; in fact the phone is disconnected! The oeprator on the line said that she could not handle this and needed to transfer me to the sales department, who could tell me who had app**** for this line creation. Feeling I was beginning to get the runaround again, I waited as patiently as I could and then was put through to a male operator in sales. He said, after my question of who authorised the line, that it was recreated once MWEB transferred the line back. I was dumbfounded and went on to tell him the entire story. He said that I should resend the cancellation letter; this was his stock answer and said he could not help me otherwise. I was furious at this point and asked to be put through to someone who could actually help me, as sending the same letter over and over again, was not getting any results. He then told me that there is no department who I could directly speak with via calling the call centre, regarding cancellations and only by emailing and having the cancellation department call me, could I speak with them. This I thought was the icing on the cake; plenty of people to help provide a line and no one to help cancel. HELKOM at their best!</p> <p> </p> <p>Well, I've done what he said and emailed the same email that was sent on 23 May, to the line cancellations department email. Again, I received an email stating someone would be in contact with me. I won't hold my breath. What I will say to Telkom is that your customer service, with respect to line cancellations is pathetic and so far below par, there is no score that could be provided. How disjointed your departments are, only you truly know. When someone calls, based upon the land line number that is requested to be entered on your automated system, surely a call ticket is generated and linked with other calls/emails etc. that have been made previously. It is with blinding obviousness that Telkom is still in the 1980's with respect to systems and needs a massive modernisation to be app**** so that customers and operators can have a proper service, not a broken down telephone system.</p> <p> </p> <p>My final bid is that Telkom resolve this issue immediately, cancel the fees that have been imposed on the line (I had paid up until the end of July 2016), issue an apology to me and all others who face this ******* service and finally, update your systems so that it is not purely lip service when your system says that the call is being recorded for monitoring purposes, but is there to help operators with the history of the customer as well, which would likely clear up many problems with your antiquated systems. I feel I should be billing you for my time and effort and stress!</p> <p> </p> <p>PS. The house we bought and moved into, seems to be having the same problem with the previous owner, who requested the line be cancelled at the end of July as well. However she is 91 years old and currently in hospital trying to recover after a serious operation.</p> <p> </p> <p>PPS. I put a single star rating as this was the lowest available, however there really should be one for ********** and beyond terrible.</p>