Failure to provide a service

I arrived home yesterday amidst one of the worst storms we’ve had in years! Trees nearly blowing over, rain lashing the houses and hail falling noisely - it was something I haven’t seen down here in the Cape for at least four or five years. When I walked in the door my mom told me that our phoneline had been snapped by falling branches from one of our big trees that sorta grew around the phone line!

I suggested she phone the Telkom emergency help line and ask for a technician to come fix the line. She used her mobile (duh) and got through to a surprisingly helpful lady who told her that a technician would come around in the morning to do the neccesary.

I endured an evening without internet and started programming the graphical aspect of my comsci project.

Today dawned… and reached lunch time with no appearance of any Telkom people. Time passed. More time passed. Eventually after numerous other calls and now beginning to feel serious internet withdrawl symptoms I walked into the garden carrying the long swimming-pool stick (that thing with the brush on one end), a few meters of flex cable, scissors and some insolation tape.

With difficulty I prised the two halves of the once connected cable out of the overgrown tree. I then connected few bits of flex i’d found in the garage and in my room with the last liiiitle bit of insolation tape on the roll only to find out I had none left to actually join the flex to the telephone line. A quick dash into Brad’s cricket cupboard and a search for his insolating cricket bat tape (dont ask) solved that problem. And, despite a not-so-mild electric shock, the phone line was not-so-neatly fixed with Yellow GM cricket tape and strung through the tree like second-rate christmas lights!

I have no trust in Telkom making an appearance tomorrow, a sunday and so perhaps they’ll attempt to come fix it while we’re all out at work on Monday… or Tuesday… or Wednesday. The question I ask is why, given the unbelieveable rate we pay for telephone, can the company not have enough technicians to repair an essential service like the telephone. What if it was an emergency and we didn’t have mobile phones, or our phones weren’t charged, or the network was down? What then? Should we hold Telkom liable for failure to provide an essential service?

I believe we so, and we shall. I’ll keep you posted on the matter.

Cheers.

Ps.

One positive is that I did a lot of DeviantArt which I’ve now uploaded, so do take a little toddle over to my DA [ www.timkeller.deviantart.com ]