Dickson Igwe. Photo: VINO/File

The following story describes how a past history of exploitation, and considering small Caribbean Islands easy pickings to be capitalized on, is finally cooking the goose for the big telecoms beast in the hearts and minds of the general public. The story uses the comments from a very savvy blogger.

The fact that the telecoms beast has become a national punching bag: a customer services bogeyman so to speak, says a lot. This is not a coincidence. The telecoms beast has become the scapegoat for a very poor customer service model in the Virgin Islands.

There is a very good reason for this. For years, the beast, a swiftly shrinking multinational, has taken Joe Consumer for granted, especially consumers in these small Caribbean islands.

The Beast has gotten away with this for the fact that there was never any real competition in the telecoms industry locally.

This very dissatisfied customer of the beast was in a Supermarket in Road Town last Thursday. He was practically accosted by a reader of his column. This was another very unfortunate customer of the beast.

The Caribbean man complained to yours truly, loudly and clearly, that a many thousand dollar offer by the beast - a typical promotional cover for its dreadful service - had elements of a scam.

The customer went on to demonstrate how numbers were appearing on his cell phone to call, in order to collect THE BIG CASH PRIZE. This Observer warned Caribbean Man not to call any of those numbers, or else he pay through the nose for the call. What a thing! Why was Yours Truly unsurprised at this latest idiosyncrasy of the beast?

Now, one exceptionally savvy customer put it this way in the blogs last week, this was sometime in late August, 2014.

“One would have thought that after 2 attempts at rebranding the company, a new culture of customer focus and responsiveness would have been evident.’’ This Old Boy would add, “instead of a deceptive rendition of a Las Vegas customer service model.”

The blogger further stated: “Here they are again at their old tricks. Talking mind blowing sums of money, a lot of which includes costings for services they provide to themselves from their various units.’’ The customer went on to add that, ‘’ their BIG MONEY TALK never matches BIG CUSTOMER SATISFACTION.’’

Jack or Jill the Savvy Blogger stated, “the beast is simply an incompetent and unsuccessfully managed company.’’ Furthermore, the beast’s claim, that the small population of the Virgin Islands is a disadvantage to investors, is totally wrong, owing to the fact that the beast, "invests on a regional basis, not an island basis.’’ So that claim was simply deceptive.

This is a business that failed in Europe, the US and Asia, and now it is pretending not to understand that it makes all its money, ‘’ in small regional economies with small populations such as the Caribbean.’’ In other words it possesses a culture of exploiting the small and vulnerable, but it is very adept at pretense that it is not doing so.

It possesses a marketing culture that uses deception to get away with its poor customer service model, where it can. This is typical of predatory businesses.

Jack or Jill the Blogger described the company’s management culture as, "INEPT." This Old Boy is in total agreement with Jack or Hill. Yes Sir or Madam, this is a company that has always considered small island peoples asses, and treated them as such in its human resource management, and customer relations.

The very savvy customer added that the beast wants Jack Customer to consider good customer service “a favour.’’ Only this business would have the arrogance to consider good customer service A FAVOUR. Showing up to repair a faulty line in weeks, not months, is a favour to the customer, for this outfit.

Jack or Jill the Blogger lectured the beast further: "you are a commercial operator. You are not doing us any favours when you upgrade your service.’’ In fact Jack or Jill warn the beast that upgrading the service, "is mandatory in most cases in order to maintain inter-operate- ability between other carriers. Moreover, new digital technologies typically result in vastly increased capacity and reliability at much lower operating costs."

Jack or Jill the Savvy Blogger ended his or her rendition with these words, ‘’ seems you can only make money in monopoly or near monopoly environments, or small countries, like The British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos, Cayman and Bermuda, countries with high per capita incomes, which subsidize your inefficiencies. 

You should tell us the per capita call volumes for originating and terminating traffic, then you will say publicly, SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL for the bottom line.’’

What an epiphany!

To be continued

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