The worse Telkom experience ever

The experience I had with Telkom over the past week has been totally appalling. So unfortunately for me my debit order failed to go off on the 20th of February as it was supposed to. I was unaware of this and received a phone call from Telkom the following week instructing me to pay. I ended up finding the time to make the payment on the 4th of March because Telkom only allows payments at certain "easypay" sites and not online. Now my internet connection was switched off on the 6th of March (after I have already paid). So I go to my nearest Telkom store (which just so happens to be Canal Walk) and from here my experience with the Telkom staff just trails off.

Firstly they tell me in the store that they are unable to help as I need to contact billing. So they asked for my phone details and I assume they sent a call me to the billings department. I waited in the store for more than an hour before the first consultant reached me. After giving my details to the consultant she forwarded me to the mobile department as she was unable to view my details on the system. The mobile department though told me the same thing and stated that I have to phone a different number because my account is a mixed account (whatever that means). So using my own airtime I phone the number, again waiting for over halve an hour before I reach a consultant, only to be told again that I have reached the wrong department. After waiting this long now at the store I started getting pretty annoyed that I couldn't reach someone that could help me. Fortunately the consultant at the store, now using the phone in the store phones another consultant. Again I waited for like halve an hour before the guy in the store reached someone to speak to. Now I did not speak to this new consultant directly but the guy at the store told me that my wifi connection would be restored the next day.

The next day (March 8) my wifi was still not restored. I went back to the store only to be told the same thing. The new guy I spoke to managed to upload to my proof of payment as well as make a case on the system for my internet to be restored. Again I was told my connection would be restored the next day.

On March 9 (the next day) my wifi connection had still not been restored. After work as I already had plans for the Friday evening I could not go back in to the store. I did manage to go into the store once again on March 10. On this day I spoke to 3 or 4 different consultants before I was finally told that my connection would be restored shortly.

What confuses me about this practice is that consultants are not connected so they are unable to forward me to the right person and it took me the entire week to get my wifi restored.

If you thought my troubles were over you are mistaken. My wifi connection was once again switched off on the 12th of March (which I noticed when I got home from work). I phoned a consultant (using my airtime again) trying to find out why my connection is off. After about halve an hour of waiting I got though to a consultant only to be told once again that I need to call a different office.

Today is the 13th of March and I though let me call this new number during the morning, maybe I wont be on hold that long and I wont lose that much airtime. Boy was I wrong about that. I was again placed on hold for almost 20 minutes.

In this phone call I was told that the reason why my wifi was suspended gain was that my account balance was outstanding for March. This made me super confused as my account is only due to be paid on the 20th. So as I was trying to understand why this was happening all my airtime finished and my call was cut.

So now i am sitting without any airtime, and no wifi. I went to Canal Walk 3 times and had to pay parking for while I was there. I am out of pocket for all the parking costs, the petrol to take me to Canal Walk and the airtime I used to phone Telkom to get my wifi restored. And yet this company still put my wifi connection off.

I say this is unfair practice and I discourage everyone reading this to stop using Telkom.

Their call center structures does not promote helping the client. And the consultants themselves are unable to properly explain why they cannot help you. This kind of business practice is total **** and for me personally I will never use another Telkom product ever again.