Telkom sucks

by Graeme Codrington | Nov 15, 2005 | Archive

Let’s hope the SNO brings real competition, and unlike Cell C (the third cellphone company) which simply joined the pigs at the trough and provided no real competition for price.The lesson for everyone else works itself out in a company like Microsoft…. To read a great article about them at MarketingWeb, click here, or read it below.There’s no spin like Telkom spinAndrew Fraser14-NOV-05You’d think that if you were a company with a monopoly position, huge profits and provided essential services at exorbitant prices, the very least you could do would be to be nice to your customers…. This seems to state that the route to take is to screw your customer royally, and then be obnoxiously rude to them when they complain.Everyone knows my feelings about Telkom’s unethical pricing practices…. This bad press has ranged from a front-page article in The Citizen with the headline “TELKOM RIPOFFâ€? (couldn’t have said it better myself) to more technical articles in the IT press about the monopoly’s new ADSL pricing system.Which brings us to Telkom’s biggest and loudest critic: Rudolph Muller and www.MyADSL.co.za, an online community website dedicated to consumer issues in the broadband market…. The site was included in the Financial Mail’s top five sites for 2004, and the large member base has formed a vibrant online community.MyADSL pressured ICASA to hold hearings on Telkom’s ADSL offering, which resulted in draft recommendations highly critical of Telkom…. In fact, he is the kind of person that a marketer would want on their side.If you were a marketer able to easily access a large number of your customers, to hear their impressions of and complaints about your product, and to find a way to satisfy their needs, you’d probably grab the opportunity with both hands…. Someone forgot to tell the marketing and communications departments.On the MyADSL site on Monday Muller posted an email from the Telkom Corporate Communications department berating him for asking questions about Telkom’s plans and accusing him of refusing to set up time to meet the marketing department. Read it here (complete with bad grammar and misspelling): http://www.mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=31384Telkom then released an incredibly badly written press release, claiming they received bad press because people don’t understand them, that their Internet Service Provider customers are frauds and thieves and that, actually, MyADSL members agree with their new pricing policy…. Read it for yourself: http://mybroadband.co.za/nephp/?m=show&id=1150The claims have little basis in fact, the most blatant being this one: “Mr. Muller’s 6 000 MyADSL members also expressing their overwhelming support of this change in that 85% voted in favour of an ADSL usage based billing strategy, according to a poll done on the MyADSL website.”… Telkom’s methods seem to run contrary to conventional thinking … or is it just me?I cannot wait for some liberalisation of the telecoms sector; improved competition simply has to improve the service that customers receive.This article was shortened by Marketingweb.# Andrew Fraser manages branding, advertising and promotion for the South African subsidiary of a large multinational electronics corporation.