Why I like Telkom

I have a soft spot for Telkom. Without them, I would never have mastered controlling my temper to the same degree. Who else could aggravate me to such an extent as South Africa’s favourite monopoly?

I remember my first encounters with them. I had a room in a house in Observatory, with my own phone, while there was also a second phone in the house, paid for by the owners. Telkom offered a useful feature where they sent separate bills for each phone, so we could keep our telephone accounts separate and avoid the usual bickering over phone bills.

Unfortunately, the two phones were linked on one account. Every month, Telkom would stuff up the payments, so both payments went towards the one phone. Then the one phone would be in arrears, and they’d cut them both off. I’d either be raging at my housemates for not paying, or, more often, at Telkom for bungling the billing. This usually resulted in a day well spent in the queue at their office in Claremont (seeing as they never bothered to answer the phone arround that time of the month). The queues were horrendously long, and finally, rewarded for my immense patience, I made the front. It took around 15 minutes for things to get heated (I gave the person at the counter 5 minutes to hear my point, then another 5 minutes for me to explain it again, then a final 5 minutes for them to choose the excuse/s of the day saying why they were unable to solve the problem.

So, way back in 1997, I vowed to move away from Telkom the second I could, no matter how inferior the competitor.

The years have not mellowed me.

My housemate at the time happened to have previously worked at Telkom, on the front desk. She said that, as a new employee, she was given a few days training, and then tossed into the frontlines to face the customers. She had no clue how anything worked, and, by the time the customers made the front of the queue, they were irate. She usually couldn’t help them. On the rare occasion a manager was present and available, she would refer a customer to them, but usually she made the customer go away with a promise to sort it out later, which, given the nature of her job, was an impossibility.

I remember too the happy day when, upon querying some mysterious charges, I was told that they were ‘for the phonebook’. Luckily I was onto him. ‘You don’t charge for the phone book!’ I said. ‘Ah, yes, let me see,’, tikka tikka on the keyboard in the background, ‘aha, they’re for service charges’. ‘Service charges! What service charges?!’ I then proceeded to list all the service charges that I was, while not happy, at least willing and expectant of paying. The charge in question was not one of them. Alarmed at the prospect of such a persistent customer, the line then conveniently dropped, leaving me seriously considering petrol bombing the bastards.

‘But that was the past’, I hear Telkom say, ‘we’ve changed’! One change recently pointed out to me was that they no longer answer the phone ‘Good day, how may I be of excellent service’. This was a short-lived innovation where, instead of actually delivering good service, they only expressed the desire to when answering the phone. However, probably because, to a customer who’d spent the last 50 minutes waiting for their call to be answered, all the time being told how valuable they are as a client, and of course paying exhorbitant cellphone rates since their landline had been cut off, the question would have invited a 10-minute expletive-filled tirade before they could get down to business.

Let’s skip over scores of minor misdemenours and fast forward to February 2005 (ignoring such gems as the friend, a victim of an unjustified Telkom disconnection, being caught in a compromising position with his naked one-night stand when his mother, worried at the lack of contact, arrived at his house early one Sunday morning, or the time I broke the phone in a rage after dealing with the said excellent service).

Surely now, just before the arrival of the Second Network Operator, Telkom is ready, has perfected their customer service, and is functioning like a well-oiled machine.

Hmmm…

A small company I know well, utterly dependant on Telkom, has had their line disconnected 3 times in the course of the last two weeks for non-payment. However, their account had been settled. Each time the disconnection caused a huge amount of stress, inconvenience, and material loss. I’ve never been a fan of the American tendency to sue anyone that so much as bumps into you, but at least there Telkom would long since have either been sued into oblivion, or, faced with the threat of bankruptcy, sorted out the issues.

In the meantime, Telkom spend their time sueing clients as frustrated as myself, in the form of Hellkom or Telkomsucks. I’m glad they thought of the idea first otherwise I’d be in the firing line.

Anyone in the field who’s experienced the mortal blows Telkom has dealt to South African business should, especially if you’re directly affected, such as myself whose business is online, should consider a donation to Hellkom for their legal fees (details on their front page).

One of my most joyous days regarding Telkom was when I was contacted for a telephonic survey. I got to rate things such as Telkoms customer service in the past and at the time of the call, rate my likelihood of changing service providers should the opportunity arise, and list things I’d like to improve. Perhaps my answers were so worrying that Telkom, (or perhaps rather their government shareholders) decided to delay competition another year or three.

So here we are, Feb 2005, and I’m still waiting to flick that switch and change, no matter how bad the competitor. They get at least a years atrocious service as a grace period.

So thanks Telkom, I’ve had psychopathic drivers smash into my car, machette-wielding maniacs in my house, even screaming babys at 4am. I’ve managed to remain absolutely calm throughout, thanks to the greatest stress-management training money (lots of money) can buy.