Telkom's bad service

I am very disappointed with Telkom service and customer care. In 2017 November, I ordered a contract router online. Unfortunately I received a Huawei P10 instead of the router I had ordered. I then contacted Telkom, to which they sent their courier service to collect the package early in 2018.

To my surprise, I realized that Telkom was billing me for the device that was collected from me in January. This continued until I logged a fault in March (Case number ***3). Week after week, I would make calls inquiring about the status of my case. This went on until one month I was charged a cancellation fee for the very same phone contract which was returned to them. I then decided to start reversing Telkom's debit orders as this was interfering with my cash flow.

In one of the calls, I was told that Telkom does not have any proof that the device was collected from me and sent back to Telkom. I then send the proof of collection which had the waybill number and proved that the device was collected and was received by Telkom JHB on the 23rd of January 2018.

Due to the reversal of the debit orders, my legitimate Telkom contracts were suspended as this contract was attached to my original account with Telkom. I could not make calls nor receive calls. However, Telkom continued to bill me for the months when my accounts were suspended due to their own negligence. Upon further inquiry, I was then charged a cancellation fee for my 3 legitimate contracts, of which I never consented to. I then contacted ICASA, after which a gentleman by the name of Abulele Mbie contacted me to assist. I explained to him that I am being billed for a handset that I do not have and the fact that the 3 other contracts were cancelled without a request from me. He tried to reinstate the contracts but then came back to inform me that the two router numbers were already allocated, meaning I could not continue with the contracts unless I start the process afresh and apply for new contracts. I indicated that I am not prepared to apply for a new contract if they cant reinstate my original contracts.

After a number of discussions, Abulele sent me an email in March 2019 stating that there was no outstanding amount on my account and that the amount that was outstanding has been reversed. He indicated that since there’s no active contract my account should not be billed. To my surprise, Telkom debited an amount of 9000 plus from my account in June 2019 to which I reversed the debit as I had no idea what I was charged for. This has been going on from June 2019 to date. Telkom would just debit awkward amounts from my account any day of the month irrespective of whether I have money in the account or not. Due to this, I have lost a lot of money on bank charges and my credit score has been affected negatively.

This is an unfair treatment from Telkom as I had always had a good payment record prior to the above mentioned cases. Phoning the Telkom customer care number does not help as the agents would always promise to escalate the case to their managers and you never receive feedback.