Is bad customer service making people cancel their Telkom fixed lines?

The first large decline was reflected in its financial results for the year ending 31 March 2019, when Telkom’s subscribers declined by 441 000 from 2 678 000 to 2 267 000.

While some customers chose to cancel their landlines because they chose to use their cell phones, but poor customer service could also be given some of the blame.

How did we get here?

Telkom embarked on a campaign to close down copper lines that were expensive to maintain and substituted them with fixed 4G/LTE or fibre. Telkom announced in July last year that it has upgraded more than 96% of its prepaid fixed line customers after announcing in 2015 that it would change to wireless.

Fixed-line customers could choose between a phone that looks and feels like an old fixed-line phone, that uses a SIM card linked to their old number, or an entry-level smartphone with a SIM card. Both phones can be used away from home, but people do give you funny looks when you use what looks like a normal phone in your car!

Some customers were happy with the replacement phones, but others did not see why they should have another cell phone in the house and cancelled their contracts. And this is where bad customer service reared its ugly head again.

Review sites are full of complaints about being unable to cancel Telkom fixed line contracts, which could mean that there are even fewer fixed-line users than reflected in the company’s financial results.

Terrible customer service abound

Telkom appointed a new head of customer service in June 2018, who promised to set up a task force to resolve consumer complaints, but many customers are still complaining about unresolved complaints and no feedback about what is being done to help.

For a communications company, communications should be paramount, but this is exactly what consumers complain about: no feedback and only generic text messages. Months after complaining customers continue to wait for someone from Telkom to call with news about any progress in resolving their complaints.

In addition, every time they call, they are sent from pillar to post and nobody wants to give them any supervisor’s or manager’s number to take it further. Promises to send a technician to check and repair faults also amount to nothing. They pay for a service they are unable to use and when they want to cancel, they cannot do that either or they are threatened with cancellation penalties.

According to section 19 the Consumer Protection Act (CPA), it is an implied condition of an agreement that the supplier is responsible for performing the services on the agreed date and time or within a reasonable time at the agreed place at the agreed cost. If the supplier does not agree on another delivery time, the consumer can cancel the agreement without penalty.

However, if Telkom is not supplying the agreed service, it is breaking the contract. Why must the consumer pay then pay the penalty?

Who still uses landlines?

Statistics from Stats SA’s general household survey (GHS) report 2018 shows that most households (18.4%) with cellular as well as landline phones were in the Western Cape, with Limpopo on the other side of the scale at 1.9%.

Households that only use cell phones were the highest (96.5%) in Mpumalanga, with the lowest in the Western Cape at 77.1%. The highest proportion of households with no access to a cellular phone or a landline was in the Northern Cape (10.3%), while only 1.1% of people in Mpumalanga had no access to a cell phone or landline.

The proportion of households using only cell phones increased from 85.5% in 2015 to 89.5% in 2018, clearly demonstrating that people depended on cell phones more.

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