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| Sunday, 28 September 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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SLT's billing errors, high tariffs The writer N. N. Perera responds to a news item titled 'Telephone Billing Problems' that appeared in Sunday Observer of August 24 and an article by Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL). The following is an embedded complaint with conjuncture bearing irregularities in billing of SLT. The invoices from the months of May, June, and July of 2003 reflect inconsistency with our telephone usage, therefore, a sequence of complaints was raised with SLT disputing the unprecedented charges and discrepancies in the conflicting billing for the corresponding months. While the verdict of the rest of the billing issues is pending negotiation, the impetuous feedback received from SLT in reference to the June invoice was the presumption that the bill was in order. In principle, we reject and decline the improper conclusion reached, the exaggerated charges from erroneously extrapolated bills brought against, and the shortcomings in the represented services of SLT. We have been vigilant and mindful of our telephone usage from the very inception, when inconclusive charges were first evident, bounded by failures in justifying the usance; we then turned to Caller-ID technology to trace all outbound calls. After rigorous analysis of systematically surveying and reviewing the invoices dated from year 2001-2002, we learned that the arrears section of the invoice are also with errors failing to initialize the outstanding amount whereas the total payment was made in due course - we find that this is an undeniably controversial method of billing. Furthermore, SLT claims to offer state-of-the-art technology for the subscribers in order to espouse bandwidth of 5600 baud. Conversely, this is only a marketing strategy and false advertisement to gain business, and therefore yield unreasonable profits from the consumer by deception. It happens, as confronted over the three months duration in which the connecting and down-loading bandwidth relatively par between 28K - 33K baud, barely complementing the services proffered. This is a mere unacceptable deficiency in the Internet services. The helpless, gullible customer is at the mercy of this primitive service rendered to enrich SLT's revenues by for instance, having to spend more time on the internet as you would ordinarily do at 56K baud bandwidth. Empirically, e.g. a document browsed or an application down-loaded at true 56K baud rate should approximate time, SLT's profit-making bandwidth would achieve the task in virtually two-fold proportion of time pertained to latency. Also common, as encountered, are the connection errors of 619 and 718 with failures prematurely terminating this session, eo ipso continuing to bill the consumer. It is only when you need to call back that you are likely to discover that your account is being inadvertently used by an anonymous user; on one incident, for nearly two hours. While complaining to SLT who had subsequently deleted the entries from the log to cover up the tracks, as verified, refuses to accept that this is a potential bug in the operating system, i.e. client-server environment, and claims that it may have been that we had shared our password - obviously, this happens to be inverse of what transpired. In this event of circumstance, often the end-user may disconnect hoping to end the network connection, however apparent, that only the client side terminates leaving the server side on idle process, enabling the next caller to potentially access your idle session thereby billing you. Then, there are occasions, especially during the peak hours of the discounted period, in which we are unable to establish a network connection to the local exchange or both optional long-distance exchanges of Colombo due to exhausted resources Envisage having to compensate for the premium subscription and not been able to get online - although one ultimately gains access, you reach the most undesirable bandwidth on the Remote Server Access. Thus, this is also conspicuous in the usage meter, the Internet logs of SLT, as to the number of times per day, ranging from 3-5 calls, the end-user should deal in order to secure a successful connection. Alternatively, cross-connection charges are elective means of unknowingly incrementing SLT's assets. Is this reasonable business practice? Should the customer be accountable for improvised charges incurred? Perhaps, these are only a handful of problems experienced and discovered. Nevertheless, one may question, then why continue with SLT as a subscriber? We vouch that it is essentially due to devoid competition from the telecommunication industry, and secondarily being, our service was installed long prior to the birth of other providers. It is ambivalent that despite the plethora of complaints to the calling center and the local exchange of SLT, there seems to be inadequate measures deemed imperative to enhance the services to benefit the consumer. According to SLT's technical response, the preposterous excuse for this despicable service is in their poor quality of the telephone lines. On the contrary, it is in the maintenance of the infrastructure of which SLT will resist upgrading, as it would be uneconomical and detrimental to their devious system engineered to endow profits. Incidentally, most telephone companies furnish an elaborate log of calls invoked as an auxiliary norm, in contrast to SLT's efforts of concealing the transparent errors in their questionable billing, accordingly to discourage the consumer whereby having to explicitly request for a comprehensive bill before levying an extravagant charge of Rs. 120.00. Thus, the anomaly of even having to check for errors is thereby profitable for SLT. Moreover, it is self-explanatory in the tariffs that the discounted period begins after a typical person's bedtime. Deceitfully, this scheme has been designed bias in favour of the subscriber as he or she is unable to privilege the set out services. Yet, another exploiting feature to extract capital from the clientele is by way of imposing individual rates per accumulative units, i.e. should the total monthly units amount to 500 or over, a unit charge per call is prorated at Rs. 3.00. Evidently, to our knowledge, no similar telephone company in Asian, European, or North American continents thrive in such exponentially profit making rip off. Besides the blatant irregularities, SLT operates as a monopoly as the rest of the telecommunication industry is unable to compete with the tariffs established not because of customer complacency, but the rival backbone is spawned via leased lines from SLT to begin with. It is to no surprise that in the year of 2002, SLT recorded the biggest profit margin in the Asian business sector and was the number three profit maker in all of Asia, competing with not just among the telecommunication industry, but rest of the trade. Herewith, we affirm and urge TRCSL to renew its commitment, as deemed appropriate, and commission a probe into disabling the dodgy conventions of SLT without the blessings and shielded consent of the government bureaucracy. Seemingly, TRCSL has hitherto defaulted to reckon measures against SLT to regulate the rampant charges and revoke its malpractice, without condoning and helping to empower its growth. The contended issues aforesaid are not a matter of rupees and cents, rather the fundamental principles of justice behind, hence, tangible grounds for defending our position. We stipulate and solicit TRCSL to address the underlying issues thereof by adhering to the respective legislations without confining them to paper. Ergo, it is the bona fide onus of TRCSL to sanction SLT into refunding for erroneously incurred charges on reclaiming the recurred losses, as rightfully due, without endorsing and promoting prolonged pursuits of clandestine strategies embarked upon. It is our recommendation to SLT to pre-empt in integrating effective cutting-edge solutions that would reduce customer impact thereof and provide optimal robust services in rectifying potential errors and misappropriation. Should TRCSL fail to revise the tariffs of SLT and reinforce its defunct quality of service, it would only be undermining the credibility and objective role of TRCSL, above all, compelling the consumer to be invariably subject to insolvency beyond hypothetical speculation and conspiracy. |
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