I Hate Telkom

Now I know that this is a common sentiment, as expressed by Hellkom.co.za, and various blog entries, but Telkom really, really sucks.

I mean, really, really sucks.

Telkom is the only landline service provider in the country, so we're pretty much stuck with them. And as I mentioned before, we pay, per second, with a minimum fee, for local calls. So even if you're only on the phone for 30 seconds, you still pay a base fee equivalent to several minutes.

That's bad enough, but ...

I also use Telkom as my ISP. They used to be not too bad, but lately it takes at least two dial-up attempts before I can connect to the net (remembering that I pay the minimum call fee even for a failed attempt), and then generally it takes a really long time to communicate, send the username & password, verify the username & password, etc. And Telkom the ISP doesn't gain from the delay, but Telkom the landline company does. So it seems like a bit of conflict of interest to me - I'm sure that they deliberately slow down the sign on process, and occasionally connect at extremely slow speeds (I'm talking 4800 bps, instead 56Kbps), just so that they can make more money on the landline side.

That's bad enough, but ...

As of about 16:50 or so this afternoon, while I was connected, I started getting DNS errors. I thought maybe I'd been disconnected on their side (my modem still looked happy), and this was during expensive call time, so I thought I'd try again later. At about 21:30, same problem. Again, remember that it costs me to dial in, go through the sign on process, try to access some pages, and see that they can't be found. So each time I think "They must have fixed it by now", and want to try, it's going to cost me.

That's bad enough, but ...

Their freecall helpline only operates during office hours.

That's bad enough, but ...

I phoned another ISP who is friendly enough to actually provide a helpline that is available 24 hours a day, and they don't have any problems. So it must be a Telkom specific fault (not like that's any surprise).

That's bad enough, but ...

I find their 24 hours technical support team number (which isn't in the phone book - you have to find the original letter they send you when you sign up with them, since you can't access their webpage!). Note that this one isn't a freecall number. It's engaged. Try again - it rings twice, then just goes silent. Try again, don't ask me why I bother - rings twice, then goes silent.

So there's no internet, no-one else has a problem, I can't check their website for the current status since I can't go anywhere on the net, I can't get hold of their technical people to either report the problem or find out when it's going to be fixed. All I can do is keep dialling up, seeing if it's been fixed yet. And pay for it each time.

Can you say "money making conspiracy"?