Telkom’s scapegoat = Eskom

Today I phoned Telkom to upgrade my ADSL line to a 4Meg line. It took me all of 15 minutes just to verify that I’m me due to the systems that slower than a sloth. So off this call centre oke goes:

“You know, this bloody country… The power must be off somewhere and some servers must be down. Eish, these Eskom guys are pathetic. You know, the CEO gets something like a million Rand a month. If they cut his salary by R600 000, then he’ll still have a half decent salary (realy?! you don’t say!). You know how many people they can employ with R600 000??? 15 000 @ R4000 per month. Those guys, they really don’t know what they’re doing. Yesterday, a client had to hold for 20 minutes just so I could complete his order. Yadayadayada…”

At that point I has literally laughing out loud as I thought it was simply too good that Telkom blames Eskom of bad service! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Priceless.

To top it all off, after I held on for almost 20 minutes to do my order, this guy tells me:

“Sorry sir, but I’m not authorised to complete this order. Please hold while I transfer you to one of my supervisors”

I rest my case. There is abso-bloody-lutely NO, NONE, NADA coincident that both these companies’ names ends in “KOM”…

6 Comments to "Telkom’s scapegoat = Eskom"

• Charl van Niekerk said: On 01/31/2008 at 8:59 pm

  It’s “kom” because they keep all the money in an Afrikaans “kom” (bowl) and don’t let any of the service escape. At least there’s an upside, it translates to “scum”…

• Jon Bishop said: On 02/01/2008 at 7:39 am

  I was joking with my missus that Telkom are jealous of Eskom as they have overtaken Telkom as SA’s number one villian company. Telkom’s response has been to make their ADSL lines unbeleivable slow and unreliable so far. I’m sure they have more evil plans in the pipeline! Good luck with your 4mb line (which is more like a 2mb line) it’s great, when it works!

• Andre Bothma said: On 02/01/2008 at 8:15 am

  Well - I think Standard Bank should rebrand to Standard BanKOM too.

  I am going to develop a technological solution that has the ability to make on-the-spot decisions and simulate reasonable logic - if not thinking - and I am going to replace EVERY SINGLE CALL CENTRE OUTSOURCING SOLUTION with a knee-high black box.

  I won’t even need a revenue model, as the public will be sending me 90 gorillas a month minimum in recognition of my contribution to uplifting society. In fact, I reckon I’ll even get a Nobel prize for - well - for something gangsta.

  And I am going to get a law degree and have the creators of call centres prosecuted and staked for gross human rights violations. No one - NO ONE - deserves a call centre.

  Except Monsieur Selebi, maybe.

• Stii said: On 02/01/2008 at 9:00 am

  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA! Good one Andre!

• Andre Bothma said: On 02/01/2008 at 1:29 pm

  And then there’s a whole new level of beef:)
  Check out http://www.mystandardbankstory.co.za/ - this ou is hard; don’t be deceived by that friendly smile:)

• Richard Catto said: On 02/09/2008 at 3:57 am

  Okay well last year when I was still on Telkom’s DSL512K, I wanted to upgrade to 4MB by just paying the difference between the 512K and 4096K service, and they wanted to charge me additional penalties for changing my contract. So I declined.

  Then later in the year, they approached me to try and sell me on upgrading. Apparently I wouldn’t have to pay additional penalties anymore. The person actually started going into a sales pitch with me to explain the benefits of upgrading. I told her I knew already and had tried before to upgrade but refused to pay the additional penalties. Now that was all gone, but screw them. They’re not interested in what the customer wants and WHEN the customer wants it.

  This week I installed iBurst. I just blogged about the experience. I think you will find it an interesting read.

  Well done on installing the subscribe to comments plugin. There’s another you might like called CommentLuv. It’s installed on my blog. When you comment, it appends a link to your most recent blog post underneath the comment you make.

Spit it out!

Filed in: General and sometimes Rants, South Africa by: Stii