Telkom's billing system is wack.

In order to understand this review I have to go all the way back to the beginning. In March last year I made contact with Telkom for a LTE solution as we'd just moved into an area with no fibre and my previous service provider had been unable to connect me. We agreed to the R899 10mbs deal. I was billed, at the end of April, the contract amount as well as pro-rata for the usage for the remainder of March. The problem with this however was that I would never get a speed faster than 2mbs no matter what time of day or troubleshooting remedy attempted and eventually made this known in March this year with Telkom. I then got a call back some time later from their back office to advise me that they are aware of the problem but that it could only be fixed after 6 months. Shocked by this I was offered to cancel the contract prematurely without incurring any penalties. After deliberating with my wife, and a failed attempt to try my previous service provider again, we thought we'd ride it out till the contract expired as fibre was still not available. By chance though, while inquiring about a laptop contract I got a call back from an advisor who couldn't help me with the initial inquiry as she'd called me from a different department (strange) but did recommend a 20mbs ADSL deal which I had been eligible for after a quick check of my area. I naturally agreed and the installation was completed on the 20th of June which was more or less the date I cancelled the LTE contract. I received an email on the 6th of July confirming the cancellation had been complete.

This is the part I don't understand.

On the 2nd of July I received a statement confirming the billing period from the 2nd July till the 31st July for the full LTE contract amount despite the contract being cancelled on the 6th July. I went into our local Telkom office and was then told that this can't be and that I would only be paying for the usage between 1 July and 6 July. Over this past weekend however the full contract amount had been deducted which I then, again, inquired about today. I was told that this was for the June billing period and that I'm to "expect" another final statement for July at the end of August.

What I don't understand is, if I'm being billed in retrospect then I should be paying for the month past at the end of that month i.e. I paid for June month at the end of June. How is it then possible that I'm paying for June month at the end of July?

I'd began this review by saying that I had to start at the very beginning because, if you scroll up, you'll see that I mentioned that at the end of April I was charged for April and a portion of March which had been "pro-rata". If that was for 1 month past, why have I had to now pay for 2 months past and expect to be invoiced again?

Telkom's billing system is seriously flawed to the detriment of it's customers at a time when we can ill afford to be bamboozled by your complex systems that not even your staff can understand let alone communicate.