Dear Editor,
Having reached to the point of complete frustration, I am forced to seek the medium of your respected publication to hopefully encourage a response from the management of GTT to my company’s complaints regarding a GTT sign that is hanging in the balance between advertising GTT’s services and doing some serious damage.
On June 8th, 2016, there was a rain squall up the East Bank that resulted in some heavy winds battering the Diamond area. The company I work for is positioned on the East Bank Public Road, and we have a GTT sign erected at the front of the building, since we retail some of their services and products. Due to the heavy winds, the stalk of the sign was bent and the sign itself is now leaning precariously waiting for the next gust of wind to topple it onto the shed of our southern neighbour. On the 9th June, my staff called into GTT to ask for their assistance in either replacing the sign or fixing it. Our neighbour offered added motivation by pointing out to us (rightly so) that the sign “gon bruk meh shed down when it fall”.
We called GTT’s hotline number and reported the issue to one of their customer service agents, who promised to alert the relevant department so assistance could be rendered.
Four days later and still no team, so another call was placed and a rinse and repeat of the first call’s outcome occurred. Meanwhile, our neighbour has been giving us daily reminders (each less friendly) of the sign’s imminent threat to his property (we don’t blame him, since he has small children and they often sit/play under that shed every day).
This went on for weeks, and to give a summarized timeline of our efforts, on the 28th June, we spoke to Ms Allison Parker; on the 2nd July someone named Jezzile; on the 13th July we had Tiffany who transferred us to Ms Angie (Marketing Manager) who promised to send a team the next day (we also took the opportunity to tell her that we would share this letter with the media due to the length of time GTT was taking to sort this out, and she indicated that wouldn’t be necessary); and on the 16th we got on to Eldon who said it was not his department and he can’t help, but he went a step further to showcase his customer care and empathy skills by giving us the 0488 number (which we had called to get on to him) and telling us to press 3 so we could enjoy waiting 6 minutes for the phone to ring out.
Finally, on Saturday 16th July, after making eight phone calls and getting on to Tiffany again, we asked to speak to Ms Angie and was told that she doesn’t work on Saturdays, we would have to call back on Monday. Suffice to say, we will not be calling GTT again about this, and if after two days following the publication of this missive (which I hope you will kindly facilitate) they do not send someone to rectify the issue, in the interest of safety and repairing our frayed relations with our neighbour, we will at our own expense have the sign taken down. Since GTT couldn’t seem to be bothered, we have no choice.
In closing, I would like to express my disappointment at GTT as a company given the way they handle their customer service and complaints. While I do not expect them to jump and immediately resolve an issue, I believe taking almost two months to address and resolve a business to business complaint is ridiculous. It is unfortunate that I have to use the media to get their attention, but it is what it is.
Yours faithfully,
Mustafa Hassan
Operations Manager
Digital Technology Group
Editor’s note
We are sending a copy of this letter to Ms Allison Parker, PRO for GT&T for any comment she might wish to make.
