Limited access to the internet – Camp Survival’s first world problems

I have limited access to the internet (ONCE AGAIN) as you will note from my communication (below) with our telecommunications provider which I placed on their social media page today, seeing that I cannot find a face or voice in this company to communicate with:

“Can you please bring this to the attention of a person or persons who can assist me asap, as I do not get any joy from your call centre.

Friday, 1 June 2018: I phoned your call centre and instructed them to transfer my line (with adsl) to my new address at the end of June. I specifically told to transfer the line on 30 June 2018. I was told that the line will be cut on 29 June and then transferred to my new premises the next week (approximately the 3rd of July 2018), as Telkom technicians do not install lines over weekends. I was given a call reference number, 256581784A, and told that I would receive a sms to confirm the order.

Monday, 4 June 2018: As I did not receive the promised sms, called the call centre Monday afternoon (approximately 2pm). The lady told me that the order was not placed because they could not pin point the new address. I confirmed the address again and she “processed” the request. At no point during this conversation did she ask to confirm the transfer dates or any other details other that the new address, so I assumed that she was processing the original request from Friday. I even asked her to confirm the transfer date, but she said that the technicians must confirm the date. She provided me with a reference number for the order: 253372347A. A few minutes after finishing the call my line was disconnected!

I phoned the call centre again and spoke to a call agent by the name of Deron and explained that the previous consultant had made a mistake and requested that my line be reconnected at my current address until the end of the month. Deron checked the order number and confirmed that he has changed the cut off date at the old address to 2 July 2018 and the reinstatement at the new address on 3 July 2018. He also said that my line would be reconnected within an hour.

An hour passed and still the line was down, so I called again (approximately 5:30pm). Call reference number 253372353A. I explained my predicament to the call centre consultant and was promptly told that the line cannot be reconnected at the current address. She said that a new order will have to be created and that might take 2 weeks. I told her this was unacceptable. After some more discussion she told me that she has escalated the problem and has “reinstated my services”. The phone connection came on again (there was a dial tone) and on my wifi router the adsl line was blinking. At this point (after 6pm already) I was unable to raise a response from my internet services provider to reconnect my services and I decided to leave the matter until the next day.

Tuesday, 5 June 2018: When I woke up the next morning, the telephone line, which had worked the previous evening, the telephone line was dead – no dial tone and the adsl light was no longer blinking on the wifi router. Unable to call the Telkom call centre from my now dead phone, I got into my car at 8AM and drove to Telkom’s Shelly Beach shop. When I arrived there, I saw that the Telkom shop was in the process of being renovated and when I spoke to the Telkom consultant in the booth outside the shop, I was told that he cannot assist me and that he does not have a landline phone which I can use to contact the call centre. I had to walk from shop to shop begging for a Telkom landline phone in order to call you! I finally got permission from one of the shop owners to use their phone and called your call centre at 10AM.

I again explained my situation to the call centre consultant (Daniel) and he told me that my line would be reconnected that day. He could not give me a time, but he said that it would definitely be the same day. At 4PM the phone was still not working and I called again (this time begging to use a neighbour’s phone), and the call centre staff member told me that she has now escalated the matter and that both her managers were working on it. It was just a matter of time before the services would be reinstated. I mentioned to her that I would be going to the hospital for a minor surgery procedure the next morning (which is today).

Wednesday, 6 June 2018: I arrived back from the hospital at 2pm to find my phone still off. I phoned the call centre and the agent asked for my telephone number. Immediately after she captured the number on the system, she informed me that she cannot assist me because now the Telkom system is offline and I need to call back again in 2 hours time. This means will again make a nuisance of myself and knock on my neighbour’s door begging to use her phone so that I can call your call centre just to hear another excuse. Just for the record, I have still not received any communication (the promised sms) to confirm that my services will be transferred to my new address.

I will pop in from time to time to update you on our latest woes insert smiley face face here.

Thank you All who inquired after my health and hearing: I’m back from the day clinic with a grommet in the offending ear and we hope that the fluid buildup will drain away over the next few days. Otherwise I’m quite well.

Our water systems remain sabotaged, out of order or whatever we want to call it, but we still have no water in our taps. We also have no information as to how and when this problem will be solved. We are recycling the dirty washing and buying drinking water on a daily basis.