Here's why Telkom should be charging us less. And it has nothing to do with complex bundles of products, or arpus, warpus or snarfus. It has to do with the fact that Telkom's service levels are lousy.
I've tried to contain myself on this issue. I've tried not to let it get the better of me. I've tried to remain unbiased when covering this firm.
But after a year of agonisingly awful, inefficient, ridiculously bad service, I've got to say something.
Because it dawned on me last week that the real reason we shouldn't pay Telkom the exorbitant fees it charges is because its services (dare I call them that?) simply aren't worth them.
I had a phone installed two years ago, mostly because I wanted to access the internet. In the first year there were several glitches - for example, interrupted dial tones when there were no messages on the phone, making internet access impossible. And then the phone started going dead for a few days every month.
I would call Telkom, be given the runaround, be passed from call centre to call centre ... and then the phone would work again. For a few days.
This year has been unbelievable. It started with the phone not working. Telkom was called. The phone worked briefly and then the next week, I was back to square one.
And here's what happened last week. It had been two months since I called Telkom about paying line rental for a phone that didn't work. I left it that long because I just couldn't face the frustrating rigmarole of explaining myself for the eighth time this year to some call centre agent who seemed both disinterested and stupid.
So I called Telkom and was kept on the phone for about 10 minutes while I was asked inane questions such as: "Is it international calls you were wanting to make?"
Eventually I was told to call the fault line.
"But I said this was a fault in my first sentence. Why are you now passing me on to another line and have you at least logged this complaint?"
No, the complaint hadn't been logged and the time spent at "customer care" was purely to establish that I had paid the line rental for a phone that wasn't working. Brilliant.
So I called faults. The fault line people told me they couldn't register my fault because they had a fault on their system. Can you cope? Don't worry, they said, we'll call you back. That's a joke. Of course they didn't.
So later in the day I called them. They asked me - again - if it wasn't me who had broken the phone. What a dumb question! If someone calls because they want their phone to work, they probably don't care if they have to pay because it was they who broke it; they just want it fixed.
Anyway, once we'd established, for the eighth time this year, that there was a fault and that I wanted it fixed, the call centre person said a technician would be dispatched within 48 hours.
"But there's no one at home for the next two days. We need to set a time," I said.
"They'll call you on your cellphone before they arrive," said the agent, who sounded as if she were filing her nails and staring out the window.
I asked three times - yes, three times (I had a bad feeling) - if it were really true that a technician would call rather than just turn up at an empty house.
I was assured it was true.
The next morning, as I was leaving for work, I get a knock at my door. There was the technician. Naturally.
He was pleasant and established that the fault was not mine but Telkom's. Big surprise.
All the same, I came home to a phone with an interrupted dial tone.
"No worries," I thought, "I'll just clear the messages and then get on to the Net."
Of course, there were no messages.
So, as I finish this, I am facing the prospect of yet another call to yet another bored agent who is bound to ask me things such as: "Is it an international call you want to make? Are you sure the fault isn't yours? What's the internet?"
So here's what I say to Telkom: You have a very pretty share price and very lovely profits. But your service levels are not worth 2c and I'm soon going to rip your phone out of the wall and invite my friends to a phone stomping party. In fact, maybe we'll braai it. Then I'm going to go wireless with a company that has nothing to do with Telkom.