Terrible Customer Care and lack of empathy

Key dissatisfactions: 1. System inefficiencies (unable to settle account with immediate effect changes) 2. Terrible customer service or lack thereof (agents are rude and don't care, they lack empathy and have no power to help clients!) 3. Store agents have no sense of accountability and are limited in terms of actions they can perform on client accounts.

Context and Complaint I have been a Telkom client for almost 10 years and recently I have been receiving appalling service!

I recently upgraded 2 of my products, in April I missed a debit order because I underprovisioned in the account I get debited on, Telkom locked my account and in my attempt to rectify this by walking into a Telkom store to settle the bill I was told I could not (how????!!!), Telkom has no facility for you to pay them directly over the counter, one has to go to a partner store and wait 72 hours for a service to be restored in 2025, so I Paid at woolworths and waited and eventually got reconnected. I then received countless calls and messages from NU debt telling me that I have been handed over and I owe Telkom. I went through this many times explaining the same thing to one agent and the next until June, I was harassed for 3 months whilst I did not owe telkom anything!

In June my monthly installment increased to about R1450 odd, this was due to an upgrade, I was debited the amount Invoiced. Telkom then locked my account in mid July, I thought I had missed something so I immediately paid R1500, and waited another 72 hours for my services to be restored. I realised that the debit order had gone through and called telkom to understand why my account was locked, I was told by a very rude telkom agent that this was due to my account having been moved back from collections, the nu debt saga.

I was left frustrated and with a feeling of unfair treatment, no one had apologised and I was always met by rude know it all agents on the other side of the phone, so I took to twitter. The bot agent seemed to understand and actually explained that my account was locked due to a credit limit of R1400 and my invoice of R1450 exceeding that. Telkom approved contracts to the value exceeding their own set credit limit, how does that make any sense?

I assumed that since I had paid and gotten clarity to the reason for the lock in July that my account credit limit would be adjusted accordingly to the tune of the monthly invoice. This was not done, I learnt so on the 13th of August when my account was again locked. I have been talking to very rude call centre agents, they have no empathy and are not empowered to help the client. I have been waiting and calling in for a resolution since, I am not getting any Joy! My work is affected because I need internet services to perform my duties and keep my life going and Telkom just does not care!!!!!