When I moved at the beginning of August, I applied with Telkom to have my ADSL line transferred. It went relatively smoothly - infact they even called me up a few days earlier than they'd initially planned for, to come do the installation. They provided me with my new telephone number, I was back online, everything was great.

My good forture with the Telkom God ended this week. What they didn't tell me however, is that when you transfer your line, you're issued with a new account! As "Africa's largest integrated communications company", Telkom aren't very big on communication.

Unless you notice the new 12-digit string at the top of your monthly paper invoice, which I generally don't even check because I use eServices (their online bill payment system), you'll have no idea that this has happened. They don't even take the initiative to link your new account into your eServices profile - you have to do this manually - and even when you've done that, you have to wait for the account to be loaded into the system. I'd love to know why this very simple task can't be automated. "Automation" isn't part of the Telkom vocabulary.

The other thing Telkom do - with no opt-out option - is they SMS you every month when your "tel no" - note not account - is in arrears:

Telkom Reminder: Our records indicate tel no 021 461**** is in arrears with R566.71. Please pay immediately & contact 10210 with receipt particulars.

This is perhaps the only thing Telkom automate.

So with an account balance of R0.00 (which was correct, since my account was in credit after a previous month's invoice was double paid thanks to the incompetence of their eServices system), receiving SMS messages saying otherwise, and a suspended line, I called them up to find out what was going down.

Speaking to Telkom Support is always an adventure. I get the impression that their systems produce random results, based on the different array of answers they provide me with every time I speak to someone different.

In brief, I'm now liable for a R119 reconnection fee. I promptly paid my account that was in arrears, and was assured the next day that I'd been reconnected. After fiddling with my router and trying all possible combinations and resets, I phoned again. I hadn't been reconnected.

The story continues next week...

And another thing - the monthly paper invoice, comprising no less than 3 A4 sheets - how much energy are they wasting and how many trees are they destroying, by not providing their users with the option to receive it electronically, like most other established service providers do? You'd think that a "progressive" technology company like Telkom would be one of the first to adopt this green approach. "Ethics" isn't part of the Telkom vocabulary either.

Your days are numbered, Hellkom! Neotel are coming...

UPDATE [19/11]: Call to Telkom Account Enquiries:
<me> Hello, I'd like to find out the status of my account please.
<Pinky> Sorry, we are currently offline. Would you mind calling back in an hour?

I received the following e-mail snippet two hours ago:

*** THIS IS AN AUTOMATED MAIL FROM AN UNMONITORED MAIL ADDRESS. PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MAIL ***

Welcome to SA Friends.NET

A profile has been automatically created for you to enable you to find your South African school, university and national service friends using our 100% free service.

Please log on to the site and complete your profile and school details now....

The recipient address? discovery@coda.co.za

Thank you, Discovery Group, for apparently breaching your privacy policy and sharing my e-mail address with the apparent scam that is SAFriends.Net. I don't know which is worse or who to continue ranting about.

Take a look at SAFriends.Net for yourself. Using the UK flag and what appears to be the old South African flag to identify "English" and "Afrikaans"? Look at their dating page!! What! The! Fuck! Look at their Chat Forum and especially it's terms of use which talks about "the jurisdiction of the appropriate federal or state courts of New Jersey, United States of America".

The SAFriends.Net domain whois lists "Umhlaba" as the registrant and admin contact, with the URL geomatics.com, which itself is a bunch of ads kak. I think they hijacked the Umhlaba name - I just called the number provided (27218722760) but reached the voicemail of an Afrikaans woman called Nina.

Anyway, I don't know where to go with this, but just to say that Discovery are a bunch of pricks and SAFriends.Net is a scam. Now you know. UPDATE [06/04]: This issue has been resolved thanks to the efforts of everyone at Discovery. The guilty party and their scam website are suffering the consequences.

Oh, and apparently consumer website HelloPeter.com is a scam, too! (via Muti) UPDATE [05/04]: Peter responds: Hellopeter.com: Scam or jam?

Found this one in my referrer logs today.

At least she went as far as changing the style and referencing back to me with "Heavily influenced by coda coza, a great designer".

Well that's awfully flattering of you, "milo IIIVII", but blatantly copying my work without asking, passing it off as your own by slapping a Creative Commons License on it, and then hoping by linking back to me that I won't mind, is possibly lower than just ripping it straight like the previous twat of the month.

Mainly I focus on creating designs with my very own style...

I really wouldn't be bothered by this if you weren't a designer yourself, so who are you trying to kid? And I especially like how she took my intro copy on her homepage and changed words to match her own profile - not only can she not design for herself but she can't think for herself either.

Stupid cow.

At the recent Telkom analyst day, Telkom's Steven Hayward said that the fixed line provider has a soft cap, adding that they have not switched off any customers who exceeded their caps.

When asked whether the low usage limits, or caps, associated with ADSL are not at odds with Telkom's intension of providing media rich content to their broadband subscribers, Steven Hayward, Managing Executive for Retail and Marketing at Telkom, made some dubious statement about the incumbent's capping policies.

"We don't have a hard cap on it, we have what we call a soft cap," said Hayward. He further stated that "...in fact, we have not switched off any customers as long back as I can recall. So we don't switch them off."

Hayward further said that when a customer goes 'way over' the allotted usage limit that Telkom phones the customer, informs them about their high usage and then tells them that they have to pay extra to use this service.

Mr Hayward, I would love to receive your response to my original post which follows...

--

My turn to contribute to the anti-Telkom sentiments making noise across the local blogosphere recently.

TelkomInternet (my ISP & ADSL provider) sent me the following yesterday (not the first time I've received an e-mail like this):

Dear subscriber

According to our records your total usage as at [2007-3-16 00:00:01] has reached and exceeded the threshold for the overall service.

Uploaded: 2.58GB
Downloaded: 1.47GB
Combined Total: 4.06GB

Reaching the threshold has resulted in your username being disabled from our network of services until the 1st of next month.

Your actions have resulted in your username being added to our list of high-end users and repeated behavior of this nature could result in an overall blacklisting of services from TelkomInternet.

So according to Telkom I've uploaded 2.58GB this month already. What the hell are they smoking?! Do they just make these figures up?

Let's examine this. Compare their usage graph with my own (I use Net Activity Diagram to monitor my internet activity). If I log into Telkom's Usage Tracker tool, I'm presented with these stats:

3 March - Uploaded: 859.9753 MB
4 March - Uploaded: 849.1983 MB

I have a 384kbps line, which is theoretically supposed to allow for 128kbps upload speeds. I'm not exactly sure how this works, but I guess that after considering factors like protocol overheads, propagation delays etc., I get a maximum transfer rate of 20kbps. After doing the math, at that rate and with consistent connectivity, it's possible that I could have uploaded 1.7GB over two days. Only I didn't, and this is confirmed by my NAD stats.

I've read the My Broadband forum posts. My wireless firewall router is securely locked down, and both my router and Telkom account passwords are very secure - I changed them as an extra measure after receiving the first e-mail.

I tried to get a response from Telkom on this issue in September last year, the first time this happened, when I'd supposedly uploaded more than 3GB over 4 days. My e-mails were forwarded to their abuse department and I never heard anything back. I tried calling, but in typical Telkom style, they're only interesting in hearing from you when you want to buy more bandwidth.

So what's the deal here? I'm pretty sure that my bandwidth isn't being stolen, but if that's the case then it's not by any fault of mine. It frustrates me to no end that my service has already been cut off when I've only used half of my cap, and I'm now planning on switching to a better ISP. One that provide a decent level of support, and who I can trust. Chances are they'll be cheaper too!

Enjoy the ride Aquila!

UPDATE: Telkom responded to my e-mail which contained a link to this post. They attached a document with my ADSL connection logs, which I must mention do not match up with either my usage stats on their site or my own usage stats. Assuming they read this post, here's what they had to say:

We have reviewed your ADSL connection logs, as per attached, and we do not pick up any irregularities. Also please note that the logs show that all the connections were made from your location.

UPDATE [26/03]: I cancelled my TelkomInternet account today and signed up with Cybersmart. And yes, they're cheaper. So far so good!

Who the hell is that female newsreader responsible for the voiceovers on just about all of their stories?

If you've ever had the displeasure of turning on your TV at that hour and hearing her voice break on every word then you'll know what I'm talking about. I don't know how else to describe it. It's so unbearable I have to either mute her and try make sense of the video alone or switch channels. In fact I'd even go as far to say that I'd prefer to have her replaced with Felicia, Barry Ronge or that anorexic Aussie newsreader (But it's ok, she's married to a saffer!) who bobs up and down. But not Gareth Cliff, I prefer him on radio. That way every time I hear him, I'm reminded of a little game I like to play, where I pretend he's the cat's eyes on the road. It's sweet, I drive over him 100 times a day.

This newsreader reminds of a girl in Primary School Grade 5, standing in front of the class for an oral. She ended her final word with a tone suggesting that she wasn't finished when in fact she was, leaving the entire class sitting in anticipation for more, only to have her sit down. Like a joke without a punchline.

And while on the topic of newsreaders and jokes, I received this joke from Nat which is doing the rounds. Sometimes cruel but always classic... for example:

Some people believe Riaan Cruywagen wears a toupee - he has, in fact, one perfect hair. The one that covers his entire head - giving it that, 'not quite real' look.

And for good measure here's another, an oldie before tomorrow's potentially series-clinching game.