Telkom line cancellation fiasco

11 April Put in a cancellation request with both Telkom (online) and my ISP on my fixed line.

24 May Received message from Telkom stating that the line could not be cancelled because the ISP had not yet released it. (1)Telkom then marked the case as resolved. I contacted my ISP, and they said that (2) Telkom’s system failed to accept the ‘return’ of the line.

1 June Not that my ISP had released the line, I went back to Telkom’s site to try to re-cancel. The online tool for cancelling my line does not work anymore (3) because the cancellation had “Already been requested”, even though the request was originally unsuccessful.

After (4) multiple attempts to get Telkom to understand what the problem was, and dealing with rude and unhelpful agents (“it’s not my problem”/“the SYSTEM says so and so”) via instant message help, I finally got through to Nokukhanya who couldn’t assist me in the official capacity because the system was “stuck” (as described previously). Nokukhanya then internally forwarded a new cancellation request to the cancellations department. They were (5) unable to provide me with a reference of any sort, because “Unfortunately there is no direct contact number for the cancellation department”

10 July I am still waiting for any kind of confirmation that my line is cancelled, or even at least in process. I contacted Telkom again today, and (6) they simply cannot understand the issue, they just advise to use the online cancellation tool.

During all this time I am still being billed. This is a catastrophic failure of Telkom’s “system” and employees’ ability to understand and deal with edge cases like mine.