While surfing around in Global Voices, I noticed a link to Francis Wade's entry about customer service in the Caribbean. While Mr. Wade's entry primarily spoke about the tourism industry, I was reminded about the incredibly bad service that Arubans had to endure from its local telecommunications firm, Setar.
The customer service wasn't awful. It was simply non-existent.
Calling information? Ha! Even at 7am, all "the operators are currently busy. Please wait on the line or try again later". Phone bills were sent late or not at all, Internet was stuck in dial-up, and mobile phone rates (pre-paid or post-paid) were simply painful. And, during all that time it was the government's cash cow.
It did change, however. The reason? That great capitalistic invention of competition. After a long hard fight, Digicel (a growing Caribbean telecommunications operator) was allowed to set up shop in Aruba. Thank God it did, because suddenly Setar's workers actually picked up the phone, DSL was introduced, and phone rates went way down.
Sometimes the right incentives can work miracles on a company. So now that the phone business is settled, I'm ready for another cable company establish itself in Aruba. Lord knows we have earned it.
Image provided by Setarnet
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