Telkom won't cancel my telephone line, so the bills pile up

I am being billed for a telephone line I have no access to and last used in November 2017. As a result, every month I get a bill for two lines, when in fact I use only one. I cannot use the other line because it is at our previous home, which we sold six months ago.

We moved from our previous home at the end of November 2017. The new owner did not wish to take over the line. As a result I app**** to transfer our telephone line.

Big mistake.

I was later to discover that one first has to cancel the line. And that one has to give 30 days' notice of termination.

That's bad enough. Actually getting through to somebody who is able to **** off the old account and telephone line has been impossible. There's a cancellation form, which I filled in and emailed. Nobody seems to be able to trace this.

I have lost count of the number of times I have heard, "Due to high call volumes, there may be a long delay in answering your call." I have visited Telkom offices. I have spent hours on our landline and on my cellphone listening to interminable recorded messages. I have made increasingly desperate calls to countless call centre agents in a fruitless attempt to get the damn account closed. It should come as no surprise that cancellations are done by a separate department, which cannot be called direct. Communication is by email. So today I sent an email - and it bounced back as undeliverable.

Meanwhile, the bills pile up. Failure to pay results in warnings of disconnection. I am at my wits' end. The irony of it all is the recorded message that I will be given an opportunity at the end of my call to rate Telkom's service. I wish I could, but there is no negative rating strong enough to express my feelings of utter frustration at an organisation that takes my money with absolutely no justification and makes it all but impossible to remedy the situation.