Dear Editor,

It’s apparent that we, as consumers, have no say about anything that much, and the agencies that are supposed to be there to defend us are dormant.

In this case it is the Office of Utilities Regulations (OUR).

Both telecoms providers have been doing an excellent job of ripping us off. I am living in central Clarendon and from September 2004, after Hurricane Ivan, Digicel has been sending a team of engineers to check on the signal problems that we have been experiencing here. Some 15 years later, to my knowledge, they haven’t reached as yet, as we are still having the problem.

From April of this year FLOW has been giving us very bad service here. On any given day the Internet can be out for a minimum of 10 times for a maximum of 35 times per day. There are days in which there is no Internet. This affects businesses, schools, and other places. To make matters worse, when data is added to our handsets we get little to no service, either. When the customer care department is contacted we wonder what they do with the record of the reported problem; someone still has to go to the FLOW office to file a report.

The question was asked about a rebate, and the response was “in order to get a rebate the Internet must be gone for three consecutive days for that to happen”.

I have not seen where the OUR has said anything about this. And, to make matters worse, we have heard on more than one occasion of increases in the prices for the products these firms offer to us.

Now, if this isn’t another way of extortion then we, as consumers, are a group Neanderthals.

Word is that this problem also persists in other parts of the country, especially in the rural areas of the island.

We need help!

Germain Johnson

mort2427@gmail.com