USELESS, *********** TELKOM

<p>I have a wireless Telkom telephone on my farm, since the option for landline was made unavailable due to cable theft. I have 10 GB on my monthly account, which occasionally needs to be topped up. On 23 January 2017 I topeed up with 3GB, which would have been ample until February. I received an sms message from Telkom just 2 hours after topping up that there was only 499MB left of the 3GB. I thought that this was probably a mistake from Telkom's side and that they would rectify it. The morning of the 24th there was a message that the data was finished and that my internet was "paused". Not wanting to fall into the same trap, I didn't buy anymore data, but phoned the call centre 10214 to enquire what had happened to my data. This is where the whole web of incompetence and misleading began.</p> <p>From not being able to pick up my data usage to transfering me from sales to technical to adsl back to sales to being cut off numerous times to waisting about 4 hours of precious time, to having to listen to annoying screeching music, nothing! I eventually tried to access Telkom's website, but could not acces it due to having no data. I could however choose the option to agree to out of data rates to either the end of the month or continuously. Desperately seeking assistance and not being fami****ised with out of data rates, I chose to month end. There is also no explanation what out of data rates entail. At least I could access Telkom's website and lodge my complaint, but to no avail. Only certain options are availble to complain about, and my problem wasn't one of them.</p> <p>Since there is no email address to forward complaints to, I turned to phoning the call centres again. And again I was sent from the one end to the other. Eventually at 13h52, after hearing the desperation in my voice, Ryan from adsl dept said he would try to help me by sending through a request to another dept to look into the data matter and that they would contact me. He could pick up that 3GB was bought, but not how it was used. He gave me a Case No ********** 72. I have not had any feedback yet. I asked Ryan whether he could help me to reverse the out of data rates, as there is no option to do this on the Telkom site, and he referred me, AGAIN, to the sales dept. After holding on for about half an hour, I decided to call it a day. I was exhausted to say the least!</p> <p>This morning I contacted the sales dept, 10213, and after holding for about 20 minutes, was told that since I have a simcard, only the handset dept can assist me, 081180. THEY, after holding for a further 20 minutes, said no, this can only be done by billing dept, who had told me yesterday that it couldn't be done. Ryan however told me that "they" were just too lazy to do it and that it can be done. So I get transferred to the billing dept and, after holding for a further 25 minutes, Madoda said only sales dept can do this.</p> <p>Well, I lost it. I told him that I'd been to sales, who referred me to the handset dept, who inturn referred me to the billing dept and now, more than an hour later, he wants to send me back to sales!!After being adament not to help me and refer me back to sales, I asked for his superviser. He put me on hold for another 10 minutes and eventually came back and said that the supervisor was busy and that if I wanted to speak to her, I'd have to hold, so I did. Eventually Omdela came to the phone. She confirmed that she was the billing dept supervisor and as I was still explaining my predicament to her, the line went dead and the message on the phone said "call barred", whatever that means. I am now at my witts end and have decided to turn to you for help. I am concerned that the out of data rates are going to be astronomical if there is a problem with the data being used uncontrolably. This option needs to be reversed and I need to know where 3GB data went to in under 3 hours, which should have lasted for a week plus. I am frustrated with Telkom's incompetence of their employees and the fact that you cannot email them or contact them other than the call centres, who mean nothing....just a complete waist of time.</p> <p>After explaining myself to at least 30 different people in abouth 5 departments, no-one could help me...this is totally unacceptable!! Please help!!</p>