Making money from inept billing system

TELKOM, it seems, is making millions of extra rands by charging its unsuspecting customers for its own inefficiency.

In the past year, Telkom has apparently “upgraded” its computer billing system, which has introduced a glitch into the e-mailing of monthly telephone accounts. Ironically, Telkom has encouraged people to give up the old mailing system in favour of the more “efficient” e-mail system.

Now the problem is that no matter how many times one requests telephone accounts to be e-mailed, the new system only sends them sporadically and not only on the monthly basis as requested. Twice I did not receive e-mailed accounts, with the result that my bill was not paid on time, and my e-mail and business line were disconnected without warning.

This necessitated standing in a long queue with other irate Telkom customers to pay the account. To add to the frustration, account payment and the Telkom reconnection has to be done in two separate places – because Telkom does not accept payments at its shops!

I was unable to pay online because my ADSL had been disconnected!

Subsequent visits in person to the Telkom office and phone calls to the Telkom helpline lulled me into believing that the problem had been corrected and that my bills would henceforth arrive by e-mail. This was not the case – and I am now reliably told by at least two Telkom employees that this is a nationwide problem and the problem will keep recurring until the “bug” has been fixed.

This explains the long queue of irate customers all waiting to be reconnected. Another bright and helpful official suggested that I make a “guesstimate” of what I owe and pay ahead of the monthly billing time.

Alas, I am not that trusting that I am willing to make an arbitrary payment without ever receiving a breakdown of charges.

What Telkom fails to divulge when you finally establish what you owe and pay your bill, is that it charges a “reconnection fee” of about R200 every time you are disconnected. So, if this is a nationwide problem, and we assume that many customers, like myself, do not pay a bill until they actually receive it and that there are thousands of customers being disconnected every day without warning, how much profit is Telkom making from its inefficient and faulty billing system?

When I finally realised I was being charged a “reconnection” fee for every account failure, I was told that I could “lodge a dispute” with Telkom. This apparently involves another set of lengthy phone calls and a dispute being relayed to Telkom’s credit management department.

I was told that within 72 hours I would be informed of the outcome. Well, that was one month ago and I am still waiting.

I may not have the time or the energy to follow this up all over again. So how much money is Telkom creaming off its unsuspecting and frustrated users?

Gillian Smale, Port Elizabeth