Open Letter to Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri

Dear Dr Matsepe-Casaburri,

As a concerned citizen and voter of the Republic of South Africa, I strongly urge you to read the article at http://worldofends.com/.

Have your staff print it out for you - I promise I won't consider it a waste of my tax-money - and read it. Read it every morning when you wake up, and every evening before you go to sleep. Keep reading it until you get a clue.

At every turn you, through your department, demonstrate your utter and complete failure to grasp what this "Internet" thingie is about. You try to regulate those of us who create content, whether in the form of websites, web-based applications, or simply blogs like this one. You try to stop us from creating small, neighbourhood-scale networks in order to protect Telkom's monopoly-position.

Well it just won't work - the network will simply route around your obstacles, and probably sink Telkom as a small side effect. I'm not going to enlighten you here as to the hows and whys; read the damn article.

In the meantime, ignore the best opportunity for empowerment, upliftment, education and job-creation at your peril. Keep your boot on the necks of the downtrodden. For perhaps you do understand that Internet access to the poorest-of-the-poor will be your downfall, as it routes around your position of privilege.

Telkom Logic

Telkom - our nations government-owned monopoly (hopefully not for too much longer) telco - has an amazing sense of logic!

Several times I have applied for a DSL connection. Now, living as I do out in the sticks, I don't expect much, least of all from Telkom, but having been down this sort of road with the a few times before, I tried a different tactic this time.

Me phoning Telkom's Customer Service department... (all names fictional to protect the helpless)

Telkom [bright and perky]: Good day, my name is Ruwayda, how may I help you?

Me: Hi, I'd like to order ADSL, please.

Telkom: Certainly, sir. What is your phone number.

[I give them my number and spend a minute or sol listening to the clicking of a keyboard while they check whether ADSL service is available for my local telephone exchange. It's not.]

Telkom: I'm sorry sir, but ADSL is not available on your exchange, so I'm not able to take your application.

Me: I know, but I would like you to take my application anyway.

Telkom: OK, sir. [Proceeds to note the application. Fast forward to a couple of days later; I receive a call from a More Senior Person.]

TelkomMSP: I'm afraid that we have to reject your application, as there is no service in your area, and we don't expect to be able to provide service in the foreseeable future - there is not sufficient customer demand in the area.

Me: So how do we demonstrate demand, because I know of quite a few people in the area who would jump at the chance to get ADSL.

TelkomMSP: Well, if we could get enough applications on file, that would do it.

Me: But you keep rejecting applications because there's no availability!

TelkomMSP: Yes...

Me: So you'll never have any demand.

TelkomMSP: Yes, but we cannot accept applications where we are unable to provide the service - its policy.

Laugh or cry? You decide!

Eskom's Response

So here, verbatim, is the response I received from Eskom. My fault for the delay in publishing it: the letter arrived on 22 July - I've been pretty busy since then.

Dear Mr [me]
The document is copied below:

RESPONSE TO ENQUIRIES REGARDING SMS AND NETWORK CHARGES

With reference to your e-mail correspondence received on 21 July 2005. Our response covers your first enquiry regarding the network charges and subsequent four points which you listed in your second e-mail.

Voltage query

The Customer Service Area Manager responsible for your area, Tobie Nortjé, will respond to you directly within seven working days regarding your enquiry.
Mr Nortje is investigating the matter.

Sharecall Solution

Eskom makes use of the Sharecall solution whereby the customer pays the equivalent cost of a local call and Eskom is responsible for the remaining cost, irrespective of distance or duration of the call.

Offering a tollfree service attracts pranksters who make nuisance calls. These nuisance calls create unnecessary volumes on our system and results in legitimate callers waiting longer for their calls to be answered.

Since implementing Sharecall, we have experienced a significant reduction in the number of prank calls. We are now able to answer 80% of our incoming calls within 30 seconds.

Follow up service

We apologise for not having called you directly on your cellphone. We attempt to contact our customers in more than one way to ensure that we follow up successfully and therefore make use of land lines, cellphones, e-mails, facsimiles and text messages, where possible.

In terms of voice-mails, our Contact Centre strives to attend to them within 30 minutes and endeavours to contact every customer who leaves a voice-mail message.

Network Charges

The monthly network charge is an integral part of the tariff for an electricity supply. Eskom does not guarantee an un-interrupted supply to customers at all times and no refund of the tariff or part thereof is made when an interruption of supply occurs.

The network charge is made up of capital for the network on the infrastructure, operations, maintenance and refurbishment. The fact that an interruption in supply has occurred does not affect payment of these charges.


I wish to assure you that Eskom is committed to ensuring the delivery of a high standard of quality of supply and service. This commitment is for the benefit of our customers and forms the cornerstone of our customer service philosophy.

Yours sincerely


Contact Centre- Customer Service
Western Region

In other words: Dear Mikro2nd, please drop dead.

I am still (2 weeks later) waiting for Mr Nortje to get back to me.

BTW, legal advice is that they're wrong about the network charges. I can't say more just yet, but watch this space!

Eskom's crappy customer service

Background for non-South Africans:

Eskom is South Africa's government-owned electricity monopoly. Let me stipulate that I live out in the sticks, and so expect a higher level of difficulty with electric power, telephone and internet access than city-dwellers. On the other hand we also pay substantially more for power than said city-dwellers.

I have been trying since December 2004 to have Eskom check the quality of our power supply. Low-voltage conditions - outside the allowed engineering tolerances - have to date cost me 3 computer power-supplies, one (expensive) laptop motherboard and several of those small transformers that power all kinds of appliances. Eskom did install a monitoring device on my power line in January, but to date I have had absolutely no feedback from them.

On 8 July we experienced a power outage lasting about 19 hours, costing me an entire working day. For at least the first few hours there was a persistent voltage of 28V present on our plugs. Now, I believe that Eskom, like any other electricity supplier, is legally required to supply electricity within set parameters - 230V +-10% here. Clearly 28V is well outside of all acceptable legal and engineering parameters.

Just to add insult to injury, Eskom's call-centre is not on a toll-free line! Customers get to pay (per-second billing here!) for being kept on hold. My tolerance for listening to elevator-music expires after 20 minutes so perhaps queue times go longer than this on occasion. I'll never know.

So here follows my email to them of today (spelling errors corrected) - lets see whether they bother to respond.

Further to an SMS received by myself from Eskom Customer Service on 12 July 2005, in response to my complaint on 8/7/05 (your ref. 1110678) regarding use of an 086 (caller pays local rate) telephone number for reporting problems in Eskom's network:

1. Cost shifting.

My complaint was NOT specifically about the length of time spent waiting in the queue for your call-centre to respond to calls, but about the fact that Eskom is COST-SHIFTING.

You are pushing the cost of reporting problems onto the consumer; problems which, in my experience, are within Eskom's network 100% of the time, and NOT with any customer equipment. This cost includes the frequently long periods "on hold" waiting for response from your call centre. This cost shifting would be inexcusable, even if all calls were accepted within (say) 60 seconds, but it is even more unacceptable when the customer has to carry the call cost of being on-hold for up to 20 minutes.

2. You fail to properly respond to customer service complaints.

Your SMS stated that you were unable to reach me on my landline (home phone). True enough. But you evidently had my cellphone number, since you were able to send an SMS to me. You obviously COULD NOT BE BOTHERED to actually phone me and have a live person respond to me on that self-same cellphone number. Your excuse that you "couldn't reach me" is clearly bullshit. Or is this just more cost-saving? I call it not being bothered to respond to a customer. After-all, its a monopoly; the customer can swallow your shoddy service or live without electricity.

3. Leaving voice-mail is a joke.

Your computer repeatedly tells us that if we are tired of waiting in the queue to have our calls answered we shuold leave voice-mail. Well, yes, we're probably tired of carrying the ever-mounting per-second cost of sitting in your callcentre queue, but my experience is that voice mails almost NEVER get a response. Only ONCE have I EVER had a response from leaving a voicemail.

4. Refund of network charges

Why is it necessary to "request" that network charges be refunded in the case of extended power outages? I would think it should be automatic. If your IT department are unable to implement the necessary data-feed between your trouble-ticket and billing systems, please don't hesitate to enquire about my consulting fees as a software system designer.

Or perhaps you deliberately fail to inform your retail-customer base that they are entitled to such a refund as ANOTHER WAY TO SHIFT COSTS?

I will expect executive-level response to this email within 48 hours, failing which I shall initiate further, and much more public, action.

Actually I don't think I'll bother to wait...