Dear Editor,
For the past three months Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) has been disconnecting my telephone even although I am paying my bills promptly. I have paid my bills for the following months through iCAN Technologies and Bill Express. After my telephone was disconnected, I took my paid bills covering four months to the Anna Regina branch office to query.
I was amazed that my paid bills had not been deducted from the system which had a balance of $9,000. I then called the Residential Manager in Georgetown and told her what had happened; she gave me a number to call the billing clerk, which I did. The clerk then told me to fax the bills to her; at the same time I was using my cell phone to make these calls to the various departments in Georgetown and Anna Regina without any fruitful results. I got so frustrated that I decided to go and pay the balance of $9,000 at iCAN Technologies.
Without my telephone service, my business would suffer, so I had no other option than to pay twice. Customers can no longer rely on the GT&T billing service that they used in the past. These observations are based on the fact that my telephone is cut off constantly, and that this has now become the norm. The computer system at the Anna Regina branch offers no solution to customers and the operation has already begun to show signs of decline. Technology offers a solution, but there need to be more competent and qualified personnel dealing with the computer billing systems.
Data collected on customers’ accounts should be handled by competent people at GT&T before passing the buck on to the customers. The kind of status quo thinking embodied in the GT&T system is a recipe for further trouble in this region.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan