The phone just stopped ringing
Things won’t improve until Telkom’s well-paid executives learn how to operate without a monopoly
Finally it’s over. It was always an embarrassingly one-sided affair but I clung on, as you do with long-standing relationships. Despite knowing it would be for the best I feared the loss, worried that life just wouldn’t be the same. Even after some particularly abusive spats I felt I had little choice but to stay.
In the end it wasn’t even my decision. Telkom left me. It just upped sticks and left one day in early October. There was no warning, the phone just stopped ringing.
For a few days I didn’t worry. Throughout our long relationship Telkom had done this to me many times and after much pleading it had always come back. In the early years these disappearances turned my life upside-down, which is why I had no qualms about pleading.
But as the years (and technology) progressed I cultivated other relationships, reluctantly at first, then with growing enthusiasm. So the pleading stopped.
This time the days drifted into weeks and I managed to maintain a zen-like calm as I contemplated the silent, rather old-fashioned-looking contraption in the corner of the room. When almost one month had passed and I’d still received no word from Telkom I decided to investigate.
Initially I took the coward’s way out and sent a few e-mails, which were acknowledged. Then I did what only the truly brave or desperate do: I rang 10213. I went into my friend’s house, dialled and sat back. “Please note we’re currently experiencing high call volumes, your patience is greatly appreciated” was on a loop interspersed with a variety of ads. I was reminded why it was time to go. Why would Telkom destroy its ad fodder by employing more people to answer phones?
I gave up after an hour, feeling a bit embarrassed about hogging my friend’s phone. The day before I had gone through the same pointless exercise for 30 minutes.
The following day I ventured into a Telkom shop and chatted to a very nice human who discovered I’d been “migrated”. Someone in an outsourced unit called “home deliveries”, which sounds suspiciously like something a few Uber drivers might be responsible for on their lunch break, has my cordless phone. The friendly lady at
Telkom left messages for the home delivery unit but didn’t hold out much hope. Apparently the migration process is not going well.
It left me sad but relieved and feeling lucky that unlike possibly hundreds of thousands of people I had options and didn’t have to rely on Telkom. I also felt angry because the thousands of workers left at Telkom deserve better from their well-paid bosses. The staff in the stores, who are inundated with complaints they have no chance of addressing, deserve better. The technicians who’ve scaled walls to cut away dense bush that destroyed my line deserve better.
At the very least they deserve secure employment, which they won’t have until Telkom executives learn how to operate without a monopoly.
In a Telkom shop I chatted to a very nice human who discovered I’d been ‘migrated’