Telkom & me

I'm moving soon, so I've had to apply for a Telkom line. Not because I wanted to, but because the gate is telephone operated, and because I want ADSL...

I've not had many dealings with Telkom before, but generally its quite a mission. And since this line is for a NEW development, I expected some fun & games. So far they haven't disappointed! (I'll document the process here for everyone to enjoy :))

Not wanting to spend ages on hold, I decided to stroll down to the Telkom shop in Claremont last Thursday. I had two items on the agenda:
1) find out if ADSL is available in the area (to decide if I need a normal or prepaid line)
2) find out what I need to apply for a line

A friendly attendant greets me & I tell my story. The reply: "Sorry sir, but we cannot check ADSL availability as we are currently offline".

(If you're not laughing yet, read on...)

Right, so its Monday lunchtime, and I once again take a stroll down to the shop - this time armed with my ID book & a pen. Get to the front of the queue, and to make a medium-length story short, I walked out having applied for a new post-paid line with a minimum of hassle. Yes, too good to be true...

Tuesday morning I get a call from Telkom to confirm the name of the apartment complex, as its not in their system. They wanted to know if its another complex about 2 blocks away. I pointed out that it definitely was NOT, and the caller promised to pass the info on to the planners.

(Having fun yet?)

Its Thursday morning. I get another call from Telkom which went something like this:

"Was it unit 37?"
"Um, no - it was unit 203..."
"Oh. But our system only gives unit numbers up to 39... Is it a fairly new development?"
"Yes - brand new."
"Oh, so you say its unit 207..."
"No, its unit 203..."
"Oh - sorry about that - yes - 203..."

The interesting part is that the complex has only 3-digit unit numbers. My bet is that they've got the wrong complex, and that someone's getting a phone line he didn't order.

Time will tell...