Telkom refuses to cancel LTE contract

Item: Telkom
Rating: 1

I was one of the suckers who signed up for Telkom's uncapped LTE product a mere month before they overhauled the AUP to completely destroy the product's value proposition. There was a big outcry over it at the time, and on 20 September, Telkom made a press release reported on here: http://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/180256-telkom-has-changed-its-uncapped-lte-fair-use-policy-here-are-the-new-data-limits.html According to this, they would waive the penalty fees for customers who want to cancel the product. Of course, when I tried to do so through the call centre, they couldn't find a single person who knew about it and they made it clear that if I cancel, I'll need to pay for the remaining twenty or so months (about R16000). I contacted the Telkom Twitter account and they assured me that they would process the cancellation (or see to it that it gets done) and ensure that I don't get charged the penalty fee. They even provided me with the link to the MyBroadband article I included in this post. So on 23 September, I sent the cancellation forms they gave me to the email address they told me to. Then, for twenty-one days, neither the Twitter group or the call centre could even confirm that the cancellation has been captured. Of course, it hasn't. After casually ignoring me for a few days, the Twitter group again asked me to submit the cancellation. Again, nothing has happened. In-between, I took the matter up through the call centre as well. In total I have now cancelled the contract three times (23 September, 1 November and 3 November). The Twitter support group has sent me a total of eight messages promising feedback, but not done anything. They have also simply ignored five other requests for feedback from me. Oh, and two different call centre agents have told me that I must pay the penalty since the start of November. And both promised to follow up with managers and get back to me (the one's email ********** the other I don't have). Neither has responded. So at this point, I've already paid R1598 in debit orders after requesting the cancellation. And Telkom's army of ***********s have made no attempt in nearly two months to actually cancel or to even give meaningful feedback about what's going on. As a side note, the LTE service itself is complete *******. It went from peak-time 50Mbps download speeds in early July to not managing to do even 7Mbps at any point in October or November. Not even in the early hours of the morning.

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