Telephone users relieved

It is not that TSTT’s service has been entirely a disaster. Certainly, the company did much better than its predecessor, the State-owned Telco. At the same time, TSTT has never been able to meet the demands of a modern economy. It has fallen down especially badly in providing a cheap and fast Internet service, without which no country can hope to take full advantage of the globalisation process. Then there is the perennial problem of persons hacking into other people’s Internet accounts and driving up their bills — a problem which TSTT acknowledges, but has never solved.

Within the past two years, the company’s reputation has taken a further slide because of the horrible performance of its GSM service, which when launched was touted as a cutting edge development — hyperbole, consumers recently found out, that TSTT knew to be untrue since it sold the GSM package without having set up the proper technical infrastructure. Indeed, those persons who remained on the old TDMA system often had better service.

The fiasco some weeks ago, when cell phone users were without service for an entire day, couldn’t have come at a worst time for TSTT — or, from another perspective, a better time for the two new companies, Digicel and Laqtel. But that was just the sour cherry on the bitter cake. Technical issues aside, it is TSTT’s customer service which has really aroused people’s ire. A common complaint is the appearance of mysterious call charges on customer’s bills, sometimes running into thousands of dollars, which the company insists people pay before the complaint is investigated. This, of course, is the kind of procedure designed to save the company trouble, and give the customer a sea of same. TSTT’s disingenuous approach to a standard service like new installations is also not guaranteed to endear the organisation to customers. The company often promises service within ten to 14 working days, only to inform the customer after advance payment has been made that the area has no available lines and the customer would get the service they had paid for at some unspecified future date. And, of course, there is the company’s standard practice of cutting service to customers who are late in paying their bills without even a courtesy warning, plus the $30 fee for pressing the button which restores service.

Such procedures could never exist in an organisation where the customer was a valued client. But TSTT functions this way because the company is a monopoly, and therefore under minimal obligation to provide good service. Now they are going to have competition in the cell phone arena, although they remain a monopoly provider for land-line service. However, hopefully even this limited exposure to market forces will force the company to treat customers better.