Two strikes in two months!

Never in my life have I heard of exceeding your monthly credit limit.

On the 16th of November 2025, my phone broke and I visited Telkom to hear if I can upgrade. I was told that I have to wait 3 weeks for me to become eligible for an upgrade or have to pay a penalty fee of something like R700. It was decided that I upgrade and pay the penalty fee over a period of 3 months. Along with this upgrade I get a wrist band. After I took out the upgrade we tried to redeem the wrist band. 2 Weeks of struggling I was told that, that specific contract should actually not have been available for me. What followed was a huge fight and it was eventually decided that they will cover the smart watch on their own account.

Fast forward 1 month, I get a sms on the ge 26th of January 2026 that my account has been suspended. After speaking to Telkom consultants in store (because phoning 081180 is less usefull than a broken glass), I was told that I exceeded my monthly credit limit (yes credit not debit).

They switched off my account because I paid more than R1 000 for the month after a bought extra data over the weekend. The reason I exceeded the limit in the first place was because of the monthly penalty fee that was introduced by Telkom themselves.

After putting up a huge fight with an innocent consultant and manager, they helped me to increase my monthly credit limit within 2 minutes. I was told that I'm still gonna have to wait up to 72 hours for my account to be activated.

Not only is this BAD BAD BAD BAD service and a super big inconvenience to me, but I'm also losing money because I can't run my business efficiently as I need to.

Telkom let's see if you actually care about your clients.