Adventures with Telkom

So, Hubby, tired of listening to me moan about that accursed Cell C stick, calls up to get Telkom's ADSL line reinstalled.

After a few days, I get a call from Telkom confirming Hubby's call and confirming the order...except that they have the order wrong. I correct them, they acknowledge.

Monday, the ADSL line is functioning...for about 3 hours. Then it is back to the stick while Hubby calls Telkom to report the line has gone down.

After a few days, Telkom calls to tell him that the technicians will be out Friday (today) at 4:30 to see what is wrong with the line.

At 8 this morning Telkom calls to confirm the technician are coming out: "You want to convert your ADSL line to regular phone lines?" the caller asks me. "No," I say, "I want my ADSL line to work," I tell him. "Oh!" he says, surprise in his voice. "Your line is not working?" He then tells me the technicians will be here at 10 this morning.

At 8:30 my phone rings...the technicians are outside, "testing" my phone line. "There's nothing wrong with my phone," I tell them. "My ADSL line is not working."

A few minutes later they are at the door and after seeing my wireless router, I am asked if I asked for "wireless" when I signed up for the new ADSL line. "I don't need to do that," I told them. "I have used this router in three houses in two cities and NEVER had to sign up for wireless...you just put an ADSL line into the router and it makes the wireless signal."

He appears unconvinced. Taking the router down from its lofty perch he examines it. "Where is your ethernet cable?" he asks.

"Huh?" I respond. "This is wireless, it doesn't use an ethernet cable."

He sends his partner out to their truck to bring in their own wireless router which, when plugged in, shows the four lights necessary for connection...mine had only been showing three."

"Your router is broken!" he tells me.

"It was working just fine earlier in the week...it had all four lights and I had an ADSL connection, then suddenly the ADSL line was dead."

By this time my husband, the engineer, has come home. They cannot blow smoke up his arse because he knows more about this than they do. "There is nothing wrong with the router," he tells them. "The wireless is working just fine...we can print to the wireless printer using it...the problem is your ADSL line."

The techs are not convinced. I leave the room so Hubby and the techs can talk jargon and try to convince each other that the other party is wrong. Eventually the techs call their office on the landline, have the person at the other end synchronize something, plug my router back into the ADSL line and voila! all four lights come flashing on!

My router is fine, just as Hubby said, but the technician is not convinced. He then unplugs the ADSL line to see which light goes off on the router...he is sure my router is faulty, despite the evidence that was before his very eyes!

Eventually, Hubby convinces him that the router is fine, and now they have fixed the ADSL line so everything is working. He escorts them to the front door and goes back to his office, thankfully only five minutes away.

Amazingly, this fiasco...which ended in success...is preferable to the ridiculousness of the Cell C experience because at least I can reach someone on Telkom's phone and eventually someone comes out to fix the problem. Three months with Cell C and the problems were never resolved...

I know how weird it sounds, but I am actually glad to be back in the clutches of Telkom for my internet connection!!