Louise Schipper, Oakridge
Just after submitting my letter (“Telkom trouble,” Constantiaberg Bulletin, January 28) I received the following SMS from Telkom: “Dear Customer, your report (reference number) was restored. If the problem still exists please contact us.”
I straight away tried my mother’s phone number and got her neighbour on the line. Believe it or not, my mother’s number had been given to her neighbours and theirs had disappeared and just rang. When I came to my mother’s house, the line was still dead.
The neighbours offered to sort out the problem and I was grateful for this, after my daily calls to Telkom. After many calls by them, they received their number back on Thursday January 21. The Telkom technician assured them that my mother’s line had also been fixed and her number returned to her.
However, the telephone remained out of order. We could not phone, nor receive calls, the only thing that changed was that the tone was no longer engaged but just ringing. We continued to report the fault by SMS and received the same answer every time: “An agent will contact you to assist you further”. Nothing happened.
On Monday February 8, I started phoning again. I was told that the two previous reference numbers had been wiped out as according to their records, the problem had been sorted out. I again explained the entire situation, but had to start the process from the beginning – so we received our third reference number and a special note was made that it was a repeat fault and how long the phone had been out of order (since December 21, 2015). A few hours later I phoned again and asked to speak to the manager. A Ms Iversen, the manageress, spoke to me. I repeated my story and she said she could see the history of the problem on the computer.
She said that the fault was in the box. She would follow up the problem and let me know. Nothing happened. During the next week, I spoke to two technicians working in the neighbourhood and gave them details of the problem. They told me they would sort it out. Nothing happened.
On Monday February 15, I phoned again and asked to speak to Ms Iversen, but they had never heard of her and were unable to trace her. I, however, received my fourth reference number to show that it was an escalating fault (which it already was on January 7).
I was told that Mr Du Plessis, the technician was on his way. I said that I found it hard to believe, but the operator assured me that the problem would be fixed that day. Needless to say nothing happened.
On February 19, I received a message that the fault was in hand with the technical repair division.
On February 25 the phone was fixed.
It took nine weeks and four days. No explanation nor apology was given.