Worst Customer Experience at Telkom Mobile. Cheap Price gets you Cheap service

Worst Customer Service at Telkom Mobile. Cheap Data, Cheap service

This problem starts 2 months ago when I app**** for a contract at the Telkom Clearwater branch. I already had an existing contract and just needed a new one. - Problem 1 - I was then told that it would take 3 working days to credit vet my application. This process takes less than 30 min at a Vodacom or MtN - Problem 2 – they exceeded their SLA and only came back to me 5 working days later to advise me that my application was declined due to and arrear. I then found out that a ********** account was opened in my name and hence the reason. That was ofcourse not Telkom’s issue, but you cannot come back to me 5 days later to tell me this - Problem 3 – Once I managed to get my name cleared, I then emailed the manager at Clearwater to notify her of the issue being cleared and that she should now approve my contract. She did not respond to me at all and a week passes by. I then go into store to find out whats going on only to find out that they needed to resubmit. This then took another 4 days for them to come back to me to tell me that my name is still not cleared despite me sending Telkom the report from Experian showing that there are no arrear accounts in my name. This then took another 3 days for them to recheck and eventually get it cleared. By now I have spoken to about 8 Telkom call centre agents with no on able to assist me, and I have already been to the store about 4 times to check on the status. NO ONE comes back to the customer to advise of progress - Problem 4 – Once all this was finally resolved with much pain, I found out that Telkom issued an entirely new sim card for the contract and not activating the contract on my actual Telkom pre-paid number as initially ordered. I was then told that this will be submitted and take 48 hours. On Friday the 29 September they de-activated my actual number at 12pm. I then receive an email to say that this number will only become active once it has been ported in. Firstly the number never needed to be ported as it was already on the Telkom network. Secondly Telkom deactivated my number with notifying me that it was happening and how long it would take. The number has since then been deactivated for full 3 days. I am unable to complete my banking due to OTP’s going to my Cellphone and therefore I am late on payments which will cost me. I was unable to receive calls from my alarm company and my alarm was going off which cause major issues and costs. I was unable to receive important calls for my body corporate which I am the chairperson off. I was unable to receive any calls, sms’s, etc - Problem 5 – No one at Telkom is able to provide an escalation process for a customer or allows the customer to speak to a manager for assistance. The manager at Clearwater is completely unhelpful and unresponsive. The processes and systems at Telkom do not speak to each other and you end up speaking to numerous agents on a simple matter. Telkom;s credit vetting dept. is completely useless and you have manual processes and hence they do not how to use discretion of a situation in order to help the customer. You have ****ed of a very good customer and treated me like a ********. Further to this, your staff have no customer service experience whatsoever. My calls have been put down on my ear, I’ve been told to go stand back in a long queue even though they were busy with my issue. Only one lady at Clearwater mall, Winnie was a little more helpful and tried. But you could see she struggled with the internal processes and lack of urgency.

It is an absolute pity that you pricing is cheap, but I guess you get what you pay for.