Calling digicell: are we getting a 6 for a 9?

I could not believe my eyes. The rates were between 12 cents and 25 cents per minute for calls depending on the DigiSelect package you took.

Well I made up my mind right then and there — I switching. I planned to just ride out the year with TSTT and then go to the front of the line when Digicel opened up.

Not wanting to wait until then to put things in motion however, I called Digicel’s local number and a very pleasant sounding young lady put me on another pleasant sounding more mature woman.

I told the woman what I saw in the e-mail and asked whether it were true or a hoax. She told me that the rates were not a hoax however they were Digicel’s rates in the Cayman Islands and were listed in Cayman Island dollars (US$1=CI$0.80=TT$6.30). Well I don’t need to tell you my spirit sunk.

All was not lost as yet however. I asked the goodly lady if their real rates for TT would be close to these. She laughed and said she could not discuss that.

So much for that. I told her that when people see this e-mail they get excited but they will think it is TT rates so Digicel should state that the rates are in Cayman dollars.

She said although she knew of the e-mail because other persons had called, Digicel did not send it out to begin with. So I had asked her why doesn’t Digicel put out a notice saying this.

I presume everybody that got the mail sent it to other people walking around with this wrong information. Surely Digicel must want to set that record straight? The lady, to my shock answered "why"?

That summed it up for me. Why Digicel? Why before they even start selling to people in Trinidad and Tobago, they would want to allow something like this to spread.

Then I remembered I saw this before in cricket.

They made a lot of noise about offering West Indies cricketers performance bonuses but it took the Lucky report to point out that before the players could see one red cent of this, part of that same bonus had to be paid as a commission to somebody else.

The moral of this story of my fellow Trinbagonians, all skin teeth is not a grin.

JEROME MYERS

D’Abadie