At the best of times I am totally immune or downright rude to people who phone me touting for business.
Given the extreme pressure that we as consumers have placed Telkom under all these years – in fact I remember studying Telkom Indifference 101 at school even – one would agree that the playing field of ‘disgruntled at Telkom but don’t quite know why’ consumers would be pretty receptive and downright chuffed to receive an unsolicited call asking if they would like to switch to another service provider.
Around 18 months ago, Neotel started destroying our pavements and installing cable. I duly tried to get some form of statement out of them so that we could let you know just how far advanced the plans were for the establishment of Neotel in Port Elizabeth. The saying ‘blood out of a stone’ really does apply here. One would swear that James Bond had been appointed head of PR at Neotel.
Moving on to six months ago and I receive a phone call asking if I would be interested in Neotel; “Sure,” I say, “Why not?” and asked the chipper ‘I have a great job’ caller to please e-mail me more info. I made sure to spell my name A-L-A-N, just to make sure, and eagerly expected the arrival of the promised information.
Thank goodness I never held my breath.
Fast forward to just the other day and another phone call. If your maths is as bad as a certain bean counter I know then hear this – a period of SIX months had now passed since I first acceded to getting more information about Neotel sent to me via e-mail. Once again a chipper (female) voice enquired if I had received the promised information about Neotel and, for the life of me I could not remember receiving it. So I once again acceded to receiving the information and was promised that it will be sent by the end of the day.
Thank goodness I never held my breath.
Ja, ja, ja I know that it could have landed in my spam box – I did fleetingly check amongst the couple of hundred that land there daily, I promise.
How can I decide for myself if you render a decent service if I cannot even sign up Neotel?
Alan Straton
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Bugger – forgot to say that I ‘borrowed’ the NeoFAIL image off of the Neotel Fail Facebook group, which, judging by the 6 wall posts could also be considered a bit of a failure.
Guess what – I emailed Neotel on the 6th April 2009 and I am STILL awaiting a reply – think that their service SUX!
We have been using Neotel in our office since August 2010. I got ours from the AutoPage Channel (authorised distributors). I must contend that the initial limitations in customer service is made up in low call rates and pretty decent telecoms service.. Just don’t try dealing with anyone who is in their employ.
Autopage! – now I am gonna sound like a real grumpy old fart – this site: http://www.autorage.co.za is my reaction to some even poorer service from them.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
I can see it is your style of writing.. You must have been fuming to register a domain, write your story and moderate the forum.
Just received a phone call from a local business selling Neotel – in reaction to my little grumpy time in this article I might add.
Unfortunately for them I spent a little bit of time on MyBroadband this morning looking at the appalling service reports there along with a myriad of grumbles about an accounts department that doesn’t sound as if they could successfully run to the toilet, let alone run a national accounts department – what a shame!
We all live in hope that Neotel will one day prove it’s promise – until that day comes I am afraid that Telkom is saddled with my hard earned bucks for a while longer.