Goozeberry: For the Mobile Future 2.0

Dear Mr/Ms Telkom Customer Service Manager,

This letter hereby serves to inform you that you really know how to make it difficult for me to be a customer – and that someone there is clueless.

As a potential business customer for landlines – I require a Business Line Transfer Application form (as I am taking transfer of a few lines from my landlord). Herewith, the steps I have been through this morning:

1. After a 15-20 minute wait and pressing the option that sounded most logical – I get through to the wrong department.
   1. Thankfully they were kind enough to transfer me to the correct department without me having to listen to that blasted Telkom message-on-hold theme tune, again.
2. Your Call Centre tells me to go to the closest Telkom branch to get the forms.
   1. ‘Ok – where is the closest branch?’ I ask.
   2. ‘Now that’s a question’ she says. ‘I’m in Durban, so don’t really know’.
   3. ‘I’m in Sandton’ I say.
   4. ‘You can try Fourways, um, um, or Rosebank, or how about Randfontein’ she offers. Randfontein? – No thanks, that’s only a 130km round trip.
   5. ‘Um, no thanks – I’ll go to Rosebank’.
3. I then ask if I can get the form off the Telkom website. ‘Yes’ is the response. ‘What URL’ I say.
   1. After the next 5 minutes of trying to get a coherent response from the phone jockey (you can imagine the URL versions I was told to try – nothing even close to the actual one), I give up and say – ‘Don’t worry, please email it to me’ – knowing that I’ll just have to find it on the Telkom site myself.
   2. I gave her my email address – carefully.
4. I eventually find the forms thanks to Google. This is where the fun really begins.
   1. After numerous (like 12) attempts I eventually get the form.
      1. I tried IE after thinking that the site didn’t like Firefox (which I’d expect).
      2. I restarted my browser thinking it had frozen.
      3. Picture this – I went outside with my laptop (holding it above my head) to get better Vodacom HSDPA signal.
      4. I swore.
      5. You get the picture.
   2. The reason that the form was so stubborn – its a 7.35MB file! For a 4 page application form!

Now read carefully please – instead of scanning an existing form and saving it as a crappy looking PDF – how about putting a properly created (in Acrobat) PDF version of the form online. 100kb max = happy potential customer.

Oh – and by the way, I’m still waiting for the emailed version of the form. But, I suspect that your mail server does not allow 7.35MB files to be sent out, does it.

Yours in waiting,
Frustrated (already)

PS – To top it all off, the Application Form is ‘broken’ – ie illegible on pages 3 and 4 where it has not scanned/saved correctly.

PPS – Change your on hold message to – “Please hold while we try and frustrate the crap out of you, again.”

Technorati Tags: telkom, customerservice, rant

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In memory of using blogs as they were initially intended – as journals/diaries, I am going to try it out in the theme of ‘What I noticed this week’.

1. WTF is with the Kiwi rugby players and their bushy mullet hairstyles – think Caleb Ralph from the Crusaders? He’s like Billy Ray Cyrus meets Joey Rasdien
2. Has anyone traveled to an airport recently that does not feel like a construction site?
3. The Sports Cafe in Domestic Departures at Cape Town International Airport must be the worst restaurant in the country. Lousy service, questionable food (their chicken strips look and taste like hake) and the grubbiness factor (that greasy, grimy film on every surface) makes for a dodgy final stop before escaping to Joburg.
4. Some advice – only subscribe to podcasts that you really want to (and have the time to) listen to – they are bandwidth hogs and wasteful if you don’t listen to them. They also stack up quickly if you don’t listen to them – and end up being like those nagging varsity assignments that you were avoiding.
5. The Tim Modise Show SMS poll has been a fantastic display of 3 things – viral communication, the power of SMS/mobile phones and topics that people are passionate about. Its also the start of a groundswell. A plea for action directed at the Ivory Tower.

Makes you think, doesn’t it. Later.

Technorati Tags: south africa, cape town, podcasts,

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