Unfair Penalties Levied on My Bill

Goodday this my case,

I received my statement for the december billing and I was shocked to see that telkom had charged me an extra R 202.70. When I checked further I saw a note saying "Payment Rejected - Debit contravene payer authorisation". I then called the billing department to query on this charge and they said it was due to the reversal of the debit order, I then explained siting the reason was because I had already made a manual payment on the 27th of November 2018 which was before the debit order date the 5th of December 2018.

The response I got was that if I make a manual payment I need to do so 10 days before the debit order date, of which I was never informed. I then informed the consultant that on the previous months I had made manual payments on the 26th of October 2018 and 26th of September 2018 and they were able to pickup the payments before they debited my account. The consultant didn't even want to entertain this fact.

I then lodged a dispute against this charge on my statement because to me it didn't make sense that I was being penalised for a bill that was settled. I would understand this rejection fee if the account had not been settled but in my case I was debited for a bill I had already paid. They could have just as easily removed this fee because clearly if I had known that this was the case I would never have made these manual payments. It's just more convenient for me to pay my bills as soon as I receive my salary.

After lodging dispute, I then received 2 SMS's one stating that my case had been resolved and I was liable to pay that amount and another informing me that if I make a manual payment it has to be 15 days before debit order date. Wow so now it's 15 days, imagine that?

Sure enough I called the billing department again and this time I was basically shut down and was told there's nothing I can do but pay that amount.

Thanks for taking your time to read, hope you can sympathise with me.