Telkom slammed over poor service delivery

TELKOM has come under heavy criticism after an Umbilo businessowner found herself without Telkom lines for two weeks which, she says, detrimentally affected her business.

Jo-Anne Horn, who runs Korean Overseas Parts in Umbilo Road, said she couldn’t understand why the problem couldn’t be fixed sooner, or why Telkom staff did not work overtime.

“This was a huge problem for me as my business suffered during this time. Umbilo Road is mainly a business area and for us to be without phone lines, especially at such a busy time of the year, was detrimental. With people calling our number and getting an engaged tone, they would’ve thought we had closed down,” she said.

Horn said the issue started when a pipe burst on 22 November, wetting the Telkom cable. She said she called Telkom every day between 22 November and 6 December, asking for assistance.

According to Horn, on Friday 25 November, a Telkom worker had worked on the site for a few hours, but told her the job needed to be sorted out by another department.

“This person came out at 3pm and said they would come the next day as they knocked off at 4pm. Needless to say, they didn’t arrive the next day. By this time we had been without a phone for four business days.” she said.

On Monday 28 November she called Telkom again and was told the problem had been escalated. Workers arrived at the site and commenced working to fix the problem but on 29 November, she was told there was a ground fault, and another department needed to install a new cable. Despite being assured the matter would be attended to that evening, Horn said no one arrived to install the new cable.

“When I called again on 2 December, I was told the issue hadn’t been escalated. I was told that if it had been escalated, they would have provided me with an escalation reference number!” she said.

Horn was told someone would be on site the next day, but that the backlog of work went back to 18 November, and got priority over this problem.

“On the Monday they replaced the cable, but all the lines for the businesses in the road were mixed up. We were receiving calls for other businesses in the road, it was a shambles. I would like to know why this issue wasn’t prioritised and overtime wasn’t authorised,,” she said.

In response to a query by Berea Mail, Gugulethu Maqetuka from Telkom said: “We regret that it took us so long to resolve the matter with our client. We are happy that the matter was resolved to the client’s satisfaction. We are constantly looking at improving our systems and processes to ensure that these matters do not recur. At times this effort leads to delays in resolving customer problems.”

With regard to the question of overtime, Pynee Chetty of Telkom said there were certain conditions which could hinder this, such as the inclement weather experienced in Durban recently.