BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – MORE than 1000 disgruntled customers of The Cable - St. Kitts' only television services provider - have affixed their signature on a petition which demands the company improve the service offered to the public.
A group of concerned citizens started a petition some weeks ago and according to group spokesman Carl Browne, they collected in excess of 1000 signatures in less than two weeks.
“We are a group of concerned citizen and we are dissatisfied with the service that we are getting from Cable TV. So we organised among ourselves and we went out and collected 1000 plus signatures of persons who are dissatisfied with The Cable in just about three weeks or less and we were not there every day.”
He highlighted some of the complaints outlined by the customers whom he said are all 18 years or older.
“These people are people who are dissatisfied with their internet service, TV service and the faulty cable boxes and dissatisfied with the consistently changing channels and no sort of communication with their customers. You go to work leave on a channel and then it’s gone.
“Another thing a lot of the customers are dissatisfied about is ZIZ being part of that package. Jamaica has three to five local channels and you can plug in any TV and watch those channels. They are not in their Cable package. Is only here in St. Kitts they have it. They come here met us with ZIZ on black and white TV.
“Hundreds of people have told us they have disconnected their cable and are now watching TV on their laptops, phones and what is giving them (The Cable) a lot of licks is these African movies.”
In order to advance the complaints to the top-level management of The Cable, Browne explained that a meeting has already been had with the service-provider’s Managing Director William ‘Bill’ Ewing who asked them to give him sometime while the issues are being addressed.
“We went in and had a meeting with Bill Ewing some days ago and he outlined some of the things The Cable will be looking to bring for the customers. He asked us to come back to him in September and he will update on any further progress.
Ewing also told the group – according to Browne - that the Cable is in the process of upgrading to a digital service and a state of the art internet service.
“Cable is in the process of upgrading to digital and should be complete by end of year or the first quarter in 2015. Next 60 day’s state of the art internet service will be turned on starting with areas with highest concentration of subscribers. It is a CISCO system with all the bells and whistles found in most developing countries. This new system should resolve about 99% of problems encountered with the internet,” Ewing said.
In the interim, Browne indicated that, “We are going to continue to collect signatures to ensure we continue to receive quality customer service and never be in this position again.”
Some of the complaints the customers are demanding be immediately fixed are:
“For years, customers have been subject to paying for faulty cable boxes to which a fee is attached whether the box works or not. A change MUST be made where you only pay for the box if it WORKS! Bills should be pro-rated to account for the time the box was inoperable.
“During down time when the customers lack service, the customers are NOT compensated. This goes hand-in-hand with the faulty cable box issue. We should only pay for service received. Bills should be pro-rated when there are service interruptions.
“The Cable Company changes packages, IE., removes premium channels, replacing them with less appealing channels, without any consultation with its customers. This is totally unacceptable. As customers, we demand that consultation is involved, and that choices are provided to customers when changes are made to packages.
“When premium channels are replaced with inferior channels, the customers pay the same monthly rates. This practice MUST be stopped.
“ZIZ, the state local channel should be free.”
SKNVibes made attempts to contact Ewing about this matter but the attempts were unsuccessful.
Browne also stated that the group will be petitioning other companies and organizations who they felt have failed the public in the near future.
