A hotel manager became desperate when four months passed and he still sat with a crow’s nest of cables and a faulty telephone line. The result was that clients could not use their credit cards because the card machines were not working.

“The line would sometimes work and take a client’s credit card and then refuse to take any further cards. At other times, it would not take any card. Understandably, our clients became very upset,” said Mr Hennie Els, general manager of the Bergwater Hotel in Makhado (Louis Trichardt).

Things started going wrong when the hotel moved its reception area and telephone lines. Since then, they have been left with was a crow’s nest of cables.

A month or two ago, Els managed to get the Telkom technician responsible for the crow’s nest to come out. “He told me to get another technician. Eventually, I managed to get another one, but he just told me that he was not going to touch that mess because Telkom cables  had not been used,” Els said. Els managed to get two reference numbers with regard to complaints lodged.

“Our clients are frustrated. One longstanding client even said she would not be coming here anymore,” said Mr Lawrence Ratshilavhi, who works at reception. At one stage, the suspicion was that the card machines, from two commercial banks, might be the problem.

“The banks tested their systems and maintained that the fault was not on their side,” Els said. Of late, Els’s cellular phone calls to Telkom are not being answered anymore, and neither have his messages been responded to.

The Zoutpanberger phoned Mr Albert Luvhengo of Telkom from the hotel's landline on Monday and he confirmed the two references, dated 9 October and 3 November. The system, however, showed that the line was cleared on the afternoon of Sunday, 4 November. Els and Ratshilavhi said that they were still experiencing  problems with the card machines on Sunday evening.

Luvhengo kindly agreed that he would come immediately with a technician, and they arrived at the hotel in less than 10 minutes.

“They spent the whole day fixing the crow’s nest, putting in new boxes for an extension and really doing their utmost. It is, unfortunately, too early to say whether the card machines will work consistently,” Els said on Tuesday. Early Wednesday morning, the hotel reported that their card machines were functioning perfectly, indicating that it was a Telkom fault.