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| BTC offers $3 mil compensation package |
Royston Jones Jr.
Guardian Staff Reporter royston@nasguard.com
Published: Jun 22, 2012
Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) officials announced yesterday the company will provide customers with a compensation package valued at close to $3 million, as a result of the mass disruption of its services on Monday. "Even as we continue to uncover the cause of Monday's failure, the company moved very quickly to come up with this package which contains something for everyone because we understood the magnitude of what happened and how it affected everyone in The Bahamas," said Marlon Johnson, vice president of brand and channels. BTC said that from 12:01 a.m. Saturday to 7 a.m. Monday, prepaid customers will receive $5 in free credit. In addition, all weekend long prepaid customers will be able to call anywhere in The Bahamas for five cents per minute, a 75 percent discount over the normal weekend rate. Pre-paid customers with data packages for smart phones or devices such as BlackBerrys, Androids (Samsung), iPhones or iPads have already received two free days that were added on to their seven-day or 30-day package, the company said. Postpaid customers will get an entire weekend of domestic calls free between midnight Friday and Monday at 7 am. Data and landline customers will receive a $5 credit on their July bill. According to Johnson, the average data customer uses about $1.60 day, making the credit more than three times the normal daily use. Benefits apply to those individuals who were active subscribers — those who showed activity on their account — between 7 a.m. on June 4 and midnight on June 18. "This goodwill gesture is one way of expressing our continued commitment to customer care," said CEO Geoff Houston. "We realize how this affected nearly every single person, business, facility and institution in The Bahamas. We know how frustrating it was and that is why we have said we are leaving no stone unturned in getting to the bottom of this. “Right now our focus is on making sure that people know we care and are doing this to demonstrate that respect." Houston said the goodwill gesture was in response to Monday's outage only and the company would continue to discuss ways to show appreciation for customers' patience during technology upgrades over the past three weeks. BTC said previously that the system failure came after a power outage knocked out its network management center on Poinciana Drive. Houston said on Monday the system failure has hampered BTC’s efforts to maintain customer confidence. “I can say from my 25 plus years in this industry, an outage of this magnitude is the most significant I’ve ever experienced,” Houston said. |
