Telkom - the humanitarian crisis

<p>This review is the last option left to me after almost 3 months of what I characterise as an astounding disregard for an ill elderly customer.</p> <p>TL;DR Cancer patient, elderly mother has been calling and visiting Telkom stores to get a fault fixed for 2.5 months with no result. This time has included the fault being signed off as fixed, re-opened, escalated, re-escalated, re-escalated, and speaking to a manager who promises to call back but never does.</p> <p>Full complaint:</p> <p>My pensioner mother is a cancer patient who is on an oxygen concentrator, I live far from home and she does not use a cellphone very well. Her telkom landline stopped working in the first week of (5th) November. Not being able to use her cellphone easily she got a lift to a Telkom store to log the problem. That was on the 7th of November 2015. Two weeks went by, she returned to the shop and I also logged the complaint on their online system. Eventually a technician came to the property, checked that the handset was working, but refused to go up to inspect the line (too much effort apparently)...."the fault is not on the property". The fault seems to then have been closed! More visits to the shop for my oxygen-deprived mother. Twice she was told that the fault was now being escalated. In mid December I started to call Telkom ( all genuinely politely) and wrote down the (new) escalation code (915420) after speaking with Noku. After calling two days later and being told that the fault was still waiting for a tech to be assigned I asked to speak to a manager. I had a wonderful, sympathetic conversation with a manager named Larise, she was so polite and understanding of my mother's plight that I thought this must be it.....She promised to take it up herself and call back that afternoon. Nothing. Well we are now in mid January still nothing. Yes it is a bad time of year for getting things done. My mother returned to the shop on monday - she was told it would be "sorted out by the following day"......its now Thursday. So - there are two issues here:</p> <p>One is that the job is still not done after 2.5 months , including a half-baked on-site visit (while she still pays her line rental of course) </p> <p>Two is that the staff at Telkom seem to be trained to say whatever is needed to placate you so that you believe they are actually going to take action and help, when in reality absolutely nothing is done.</p> <p>Telkom has utter disregard for its customers and no reason to change!</p>