Asked by the Customer on 04-11-2014 17:50:26
Question posted in the Consumer Protection Law category relating to Gauteng

I originally I had a data contract with Telkom for 24 months. The term came to an end in Dec 2013. In July of 2014 I queried to cancel the service to which I was sent a cancelation form. I sent through the form and was noted it would take 20 days to process. In September I noticed my account was still being debited. I then sent a follow up email asking them to please advise the problem, to which I recieved no communication back. I then called in to the customer service. They said the reason it was not cancelled is because I renewed the contract telephonically in January and had to pay a cancelation fee. I had no recollection of this so I requested to hear the conversation for my own sanity. They said they would find it and get back to me. They did not get back to me. Now in Oct I called them back and said I want to hear it, after waiting on the phone for an hour and speaking to 4 different people, I got to hear the eleged recording of myself - I was wrong and I did renew the contract telephonically. I apologized. Now they still want me to pay the R800 cancelation which I feel is highly unfair as I have not being using their service for the last 4months and they have still been debiting my account the whole time. Upon research I found that if you do sent them written cancelation they have to respond within 20 days to which they didn\'t. Do I have any grounds to stand on? I feel something like this could of been handled in a day or two and not 4 months. The ethics of the situation feel really unjust. Please can you help with any advise