We've been struggling with out Telkom ADSL line for the past two evenings, sometime after eight the line goes dead and doesn't work again while we're still up. It does however work fine again the next morning. Calls to Telkom keeps you busy for 45 minutes before you even get to talk to a consultant, only to receive a reference number and an (empty) promise to phone you back the next day to arrange for a technician to come out.

So I've got a question - if you run Telkom, do you have customer service plan? I mean, is there someone (or someones) that set up a plan and say - at minimum if there is a problem somewhere with our service, and we get queries we have to get back to the people who phoned in within 24 hours, even if it's just a heads up that we're still working on it?

And a second question - is it realistic for us as consumers to expect a certain level of service from them - under any circumstances - or should we just accept that they don't have give attention to out problems when we have them?

And third question - If I can promise my clients a 24 hour turnover on queries - even if it is just a follow up to say I am still working on it, and I'm only me handling all work and queries - why can't a big company like Telkom make the same promise?