Dear Claudienne,

My family home has used FLOW formerly Cable & Wireless Services for decades but now the time has come for this relationship to end. Like any divorce, the separation has been painful.

  We had telephone and Internet services from FLOW in my mother’s name but in October 2018, due to some technical issues, we lost our landline telephone service. It has not worked since. This would be a phone number we have had for over 40 years.

 A technician came and said the issue was outside of his control but FLOW would resolve it at a later date. Our Internet services went down frequently as well, but the phone was totally down for nine months. Even though the complaint was lodged, FLOW kept billing us for telephone and Internet services for months as though we had  a proper service.

We kept paying these bills as we were told that it was their policy to give a rebate after the issue is resolved. The phone service returned in June 2019 but when we  asked  for the rebate to be reflected on the phone bill,  we were told that it was in process. We then stopped paying the bill seeing that the  rebate was not forthcoming. Our phone service was then cut off as FLOW continued to bill us in the same manner.

 We visited the FLOW office on August 14, 2019  and a manager informed us that the rebate investigations had been completed, but the person who should  sign off on it had retired. On hearing this we decided to close the account so as to not incur any more charges. Out of frustration we decided to opt for Digicel Play services recently.

 We visited the FLOW office again, today  (November 28, 2019) and got number 50 from their Customer Service Ticketing system. Luckily another frustrated customer with number 48 had left. At this time they were serving customer 28. At 12:30pm they had reached customer 31 (three customers were served in 50 minutes).

When we asked for a manager and were told that no manager was available, we left and decided to write to you.

We  hope that you, help us to get closure to this issue.

 We need to know what our final balance is so we can pay our “true”balance (or receive a rebate/refund).

We intend to port our phone number to Digicel once this is cleared up.

GM

Dear GM

Tell Claudienne took up your case with FLOW and the column received the following response from the company:

“Thank you for bringing the matter below to our attention. Please note that the account was reviewed and adjusted for the period that they were  without landline service – from November 14, 2018 to July 10, 2019.

They have been contacted and advised accordingly.

 Thanks again for providing us with an opportunity to address this concern and we wish to apologise to our customers for any miscommunication that has resulted in their experience.”

 Have a problem with a store, utility, a company? Telephone 876-936-9436 or cell 876-484-1349 or write to: Tell Claudienne c/o Sunday Finance, Jamaica Observer, 40-42 1/2 Beechwood Avenue, Kingston 5; or e-mail: edwardsc@jamaicaobserver.com. Please include a contact phone number.