Dear Editor,
I applied for a “bundles plan” with GTT for $449 in the latter part of last year at approximately 5.30 pm. I was shortly after denied the application and sent a message asking me to contact 0488. I called the number and was told by a representative that the information would be sent to a technician and that I would be apprised of the result. I was asked to check later in the evening. Within the next hour I was sent a text from the company saying that a $249 data plan which I had applied for and received the day before at approximately the same time, had just been automatically renewed. This made me realise that my new balance would not have enabled me to get the $449 plan I had just applied for and which GTT had not activated. I called the company to lodge my complaint by telling them that my $249 plan should not have been renewed because I had preferred the $449 plan which I had applied for before the scheduled, automatic renewal of the $249 plan. They should have investigated the balance of credit on my account and put measures in place to keep it intact so that the $449 plan would have been activated when they had cleared up their technical interference with my request. Their statement was that such an action was not a part of what they would do. I insisted at that point that even if they didn’t usually follow those steps, they should either give me the $449 plan without charge or credit my account with $200 which would have been the difference between the $249 and the $449 plans. The representative said that neither of these two actions was possible.
On a Sunday at approximately the same time last year, I went through the *100# sequence to deactivate my “after two” feature and I received a text from GTT saying that the service was not enabled (had not been renewed the day before) although I had credit at that time for an automatic renewal. I immediately called the company to confirm the status of my “after two” service because the last text I had seen in relation to that was one which had come on Friday morning saying that it was just renewed. The representative told me that the service was in effect and that I must go through the steps to deactivate it. I hung up and did so but I received the same text saying that it was not enabled. I called back and asked for the supervisor who like most of GTT’s representatives attempted to interrupt me while I was making a salient point. I received the same refusal to appease me in any way or to accept that they could do a better job. I then took the opportunity to tell her about a recent experience when I accepted an offer to “chat and surf” texted to me by the company. I was disappointed to discover that the offer did not allow me the opportunity to chat but only to text and use the Internet. I told her that chat does not mean messaging and that GTT continues to make mistakes in their marketing and that they should provide their marketers with a dictionary or fire them. A medium had published an article of mine which had revealed the poor and misleading advertising of GTT. One of its managers subsequently called me and apologized profusely. However, words no longer suffice. They need to portray the finer qualities that a thriving company with such a vital service, should extend to its customers.
Yours faithfully,
Conrad Barrow
