Bajans Caught in Cell Phone Trap
The recently announced unification of the cellular phone providers to collect what they call bad debt can only be described as a further assault on Barbadians who fell prey to what I call the cellular phone trap.
The first problem that customers face is that they have no way of monitoring what they use. When these providers launched and customers tried to find out how many minutes they use and how much is left they were told that they could not be given that information. Some said that their system was not set up to give that information and it would come out on your bill.
The second problem is that if you make a 15 second call you are billed for the first minute even though you did not use a minute. This erodes your minutes and make it virtually impossible for you to tell what they have taken out of your minutes.
The third problem is that when you go over your package you are penalized and your rate more than doubles for each minute. So Barbadians start getting bills for $2000.00 or more per month. What are we doing here, renting a house? Even to get a cellular phone bill for $500.00 is ridiculous.
Now we pay $28.00 per month for unlimited use of a residential phone and $115 for a business phone, why should we be paying so much more for cellular phones. We are not making long distance or overseas calls, we are within 166 square miles.
I have to ask the providers if they incur expenses for every single call that is made. I have to ask C&W the same thing. I have to further ask why can't post-paid callers be billed for what they use rather than being stuck with a package? Why do you have to charge so much more when an account goes over the package?
Tell me why can't the consumer pay 20 cents per minute on all the minutes used? Do you incur additional expense per call when a customer goes over the package? If it is a question of traffic congestion then to charge extra is a deterrent and therefore a penalty fixed arbitrarily and not based on costs. Do you incur costs when there is traffic congestion?
Those defaulters you are going after I would guess have bills over $1000.00 which they would not have accumulated over more than three months. These are the customers who got caught in the trap.
Something must be done to drastically reduce the costs of operating cellular phones. It has implications for the CSME and for we as a Caribbean brothers who need to be encouraged to communicate with our neighbours rather than discouraged.
This is a perpetration of the digital divide and I don't see any bridging in the near future. This is outrageous because while we try to protect ourselves from gambling, we have a device in our midst that is virtually taking away the earnings of our people. If we do it for gambling then we must do it for cellular phones and this is a call on Government to help us out of this mess.
The policy of the Government is to create a more competitive environment. It is said that in order to protect ourselves from the global onslaught we must become competitive. Part of being competitive is access to telecommunications. How come it is cheaper for a person in the USA to call the Caribbean as apposed to the outrageous rates that we are charged in the other direction?
I must therefore take issue with Grady Clarke of Caribbean who infers that Barbadians are dishonest while they are only trying to survive in the real world. Not only is he going after Barbadians he is going after all the Caribbean in what can only be described as a vicious sweep as he declared that bad debtors have more to fear than losing out on post-paid: they could find that they have to pay cash for items normally offered on credit.
This is a further penalty which none of these bad debtors deserve. There are many stores that operate on credit and if the credit ratings of Barbadians were that bad these stores would have gone out of business every since. To hold these cellular phones bills over the heads of Barbadians could only be seen as part of a conspiracy to deprive those who would normally have a good credit rating if cellular phones were not invented.
Finally, it could only be said that Barbadians have rose to the occasion to support cellular providers. Don't think that pre-paid customers are not suffering. It has fast becoming common to hear somebody begging for money, not for food, clothing or shelter, but to put minutes on their cell phone. A word to the wise is enough.
Roosevelt O. King
Secretary General - BANGO
e-mail: bango@socamail.com
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