Telkom's little quasi legal customer ******ion side hustle to make an extra buck.

Most South Africans usually think of ********s as *****s, ******s or hijackers who usually are individuals in many cases who are just trying to survive. And they usually get locked up and have to pay for their crimes justice is served. But there seams to be no punishment for crimes comitted by companies such as Telkom who are actively *****ing and de*****ing clients of their money by ways and means no different to common street ****s. This is not the first time Telkom has done this in my case and not the only company that has tried and I highly doubt I am the only person that this has happened to. Generally I no longer sign debit orders for anything. I signed up for a 219 Rand Telkom contract to be debited from my account and the 15th day of every month. Now firstly they start of by missing the date that I agreed upon So they don't debit on the 15th and stipulated in the contract, they now decide they will be debit on the last day of the month and actually debit for 2 month in one shot. without actually informing the client or customer of their intend to do so. I usually transfer money out of my accounts when I am not expecting to be making payments, and I definitely am not expecting to be paying double of what I'm supposed to. So now Telkom issues a debit order Return fee which is I think 220, So now I have to a fine to them for them not sticking to the stipulated dates or amounts. The next month they again debit or try and debit on again any other day then the one I agreed upon now for the 2 month contract plus a R220 fine which is higher than the contract I actually signed for and I got because they without any warning are trying to ransack my accounts for amounts that weren't stipulated and none of the actual support departments work or can actually adjust things So by month3 Telkom is now trying to debit my account without any prior warning for a grand total of 700 Rand, which is now almost 3 times the amount I have allocated or budgeted for and they will try and run the debit order when ever they feel like it. Usually by the 3rd month they send you lawyers letters and try and bully you to pay up for amounts you actually do not owe that have been beefed up with punishment fees because they like to run surprise debit orders on unsuspecting customers. There is absolutely no difference here to how street gangs would ****** protection money at any given tome from small business owners on their turf and they get away with it repeatedly as you cant put telkom in Jail and no one is actually putting a stop to this. And I have definately seen an alrming trend in South Africa where consumers are billed for services that they didnt order or received or the company messed up but the consumer will be threatened or bul**** into paying by their collection companies or agencies who very rarely actually work within what is legally allowed. These big companies pray on the fact that one individual client will just be bulldozed into submission and very rarely can afford legal representation to match the company they are up against. I do hope at some point the South African government will actually help consumers not be be exploited. But if any company for whatever reason can ransack your accounts at any given time and for any amounts they felt like adding to your invoice. because they somehow managed to get you to sign a debit order, how is that any different from getting ****** on any street corner by a common ***** ? I would probably prefer to be ****** by a common **** who was extremely desperate to feed some hungry mouths at home. Than a ******** conglomerate doing it out of pure greed and robbing and *****ing from consumers on a large scale and the knowledge that they get away with it unchallenged. And I am actually extremely happy with the product I got from Telkom and the actual overall deal. Not extremely enthusiastic about paying 3 times more for it getting invoiced for mistakes they make or them having an actual support department that can actually sort out the problem that they managed to creat on their side in first place. To this day I have never managed to actual get an invoice fro the telkom app or website when I try to access it that says anything other then Technical Error, try again later. FYI tried 4 years later same story.