Telkom is awesome.

brad — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:57:58 +0200

In a week we are moving houses. We have a list of things that need to be sorted before we move. So, one of the things on the list is moving our phone line/ADSL. I have a one price ADSL from cybersmart so I can take advantage of their Night Rider plan. Little did I know, paying for our ADSL portion from another supplier was something Telkom Just Couldn't Handle during a transfer.

I phoned Telkom's 10219 number, and was told I needed to call a random number to have the transfer done, because there was an ADSL linked to it. So we tried the cybersmart route. Mandy phoned and asked if we could have the line moved. Cybersmart wasn't so sure. So, we tried Telkom again. After some lengthly discussions Telkom came back with the point that the ISP has to initiate the move. So, back to cybersmart. This time cybersmart was helpful, and said I just needed to fax them my details and request, and they could go ahead, provided they had my signature. Cybersmart phoned back a few days later to tell me the fax was quite light, so they couldn't make out much. After chatting to the very helpful cybersmarter, she said she could transfer the ADSL portion back to Telkom, and then I could handle the transfer, and once it was complete Cybersmart could migrate the line back. Convoluted, but Telkom understandable. Took a few days, but today the migration went through, and round 2 started.

I phoned Telkom, and the very helpful call centre person started to sort me out. No charges, just time. I thought I was on the home run. Then I pointed out that the line had an ADSL on it, and I wouldn't mind having the number changed. Apparently it costs R543.23 to transfer an ADSL line between premises. WHAT? But, doing a self-install of ADSL costs R0.00. So, after some protracted negotiations, the path became clear:

Cancel my ADSL portion ("downgrade" my line), transfer to the new premises (and because there is no ADSL associated I can roll in a phone number change), once the line is active in the new house, then I can re-initiate the ADSL portion for free. WOW.

It's like peeling layers off an onion, and then putting the onion back together. Through all of this the call centre people were lank nice and helpful, but the system gets me down.

Just to re-cap, to have ADSL and a phone line moved to my new house (which is about 1km away from my old one) I have to:
Instruct Cybersmart to migrate my ADSL back to Telkom, Ask Telkom to cancel my ADSL, Ask Telkom to move my phone line to my new house, Wait for the new line, Ask Telkom to "upgrade" my line to include ADSL, transfer the ADSL back to Cybersmart. Awesome system guys.