CABLE AND Wireless Jamaica Limited (C&W) yesterday launched a customer charter, with an assurance that it will compensate customers if the company fails to deliver on specific promises relating to certain services.
The charter becomes effective March 1, 2001, and according to C&W acting president, Gary Barrow, and Residential Services vice-president, Gem Davis, the company has already retooled in terms of staff retraining and technological upgrading in order to put its money where its mouth is.
The customer charter will grant assurances including the following:
The installation of a telephone after application will take seven days for business premises and 14 days for residential premises.
Repairs to faulty telephone lines should take no more than two days for commercial users and not longer than five days for residential customers.
The provision of either telephone features or voicemail is supposed to take no more than eight hours for either residential or business premises.
The provision of Internet dial-up service is supposed to take no more than one hour.
Calls to the company's 24-hour call centre should be answered in no more than 20 seconds.
Mr. Barrow told media briefing yesterday at Le Meridian Jamaica Pegasus that since living up to the charter will mean bringing new customers on board and better maintenance of the service to existing ones, the company actually expects to rake in more revenue from introducing the charter. He downplayed the cost of introducing the charter as insignificant.
However if, or when, the company fails to deliver on its assurances, it stands to lose money, as it will promise the following cash rebates under certain circumstances:
If a direct line is not installed within the specified time frame, a business customer is eligible for a $840 refund, while a residential customer can claim $600.
For the failure to install a feature or a voicemail option within eight hours both residential and commercial customers can claim a $70 refund under the terms of the charter.
Failure to install Internet dial-up service within one hour of application should result in the customer being refunded for the value of one month's service, which at US$50 per month at a 44x1 exchange rate would be as much as $2,200.
The charter also includes the fine print of terms and conditions, including the following:
The provision of any service under the charter, such as telephone lines, is subject to the relevant infrastructure being in place at the time of the application.
Claims must be made within 30 days of the company's failure to deliver the service within the required time-frame.
The company refuses liability if an attempt to provide the required service is interrupted or aborted by "acts of God" and natural occurrences like hurricanes.
The "days" referred to in the charter mean the regular working days of the regular 5-day work week.
Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) Director General, Winston Haye, an invited guest at the function, expressed his disappointment that the company' s beleaguered cellular service was not included. While giving the assurance that its mobile division will eventually introduce its own charter, the company could not give a timetable for the introduction of that charter.
Acting President Gary Barrow admitted to journalists that the mobile division is presently swamped in its attempts to keep up with a demand for cellular service that has outstripped its own projections and its capacity to handle the "cellie" traffic.
Alluding to the pressure of competition, Mr. Barrow said expanding capacity has to be the single most important priority for the mobile division right now, and he spoke of 40 new cellular transmitter sites being installed by the end of 2002, to boost the company's current stock of 94.
