Bad service angers mobile phone users

Bad service angers mobile phone users

JAKARTA (JP): Cellular phones are all the rage but many people
buy them without thinking of the problems they bring.

Complaints about cellular phones including the unexpected
costs and complicated traffic calls were aired in a dialog
between operators and customers yesterday.

Monique, who has been a Telkomsel customer for one-and-a-half-
years, complained it was hard to make call from her house in
Bintaro, South Jakarta.

"I pay about Rp 90,000 (US$38) a month, even though I hardly
use the phone," Monique told about 200 participants, mostly
cellular phones owners, at the one-day meeting.

When she told a customer service officer she was told harshly
to get out of Bintaro to make a call.

PT Telkomsel is one of three operators of the Global System
for Mobile Communications (GSM), one of three mobile cellular
telecommunications systems in Indonesia. Other GSM operators are
PT Satelindo and PT Excelcomindo.

The dialog was organized by the Kompas daily with cellular
phone operators Komselindo, Telkomsel, Satelindo, Ratelindo and
GSM-XL, which is run by Excelcomindo.

Satelindo's customer Purnomo complained about his telephone's
inability to make call from the basement of tall buildings and
that his line was always busy even when he was not using it.

Furthermore, Satelindo failed to bill him frequently, he said.

Komselindo customer Tri Yuliana said conversations on her
cellular phone were often cut off and often she could not be
reached because the phone said she was "not in the service area"
even though she was and the phone was on.

PT Komselindo is one of the operators of the analog Advanced
Mobile Phone System (AMPS), the first system in
Indonesia, which operates at between 870 megahertz (mhz) and 890
mhz.

S. Dalimonte, a customer of PT Radio Telephone Indonesia
(Ratelindo) which is the first cellular digital radio telephone
system, strongly complained about his bill skyrocketing, saying
the bill included an international call.

"In November, my bill suddenly rose by Rp 450,000, which was
because of international calls to Cameroon. I never made the
calls and when I reported this to a customer service officer, he
accused my son of using it for party line talks," Dalimonte said.

"The officer said he had the evidence but when I asked for it,
he said it was against his code of ethics."

Dalimonte finally agreed to pay because he needed the phone
but in December another international call was billed to him.

"I didn't want to pay Rp 850,000 for a call that I didn't
make. If there's no solution to my problem, Ratelindo better take
the phone back," he said

GSM-XL customer Agung complained the operator's promise of
five-easy-steps to operate his cellular phone did not work for
him.

"It's not five-easy-steps but a thousand steps," Agung said.

Indonesian Consumer Foundation's (YLKI) deputy chairman Agus
Pambagio urged operators to deal with the complaints soon. "If
they don't, the complaints will become big problems within one or
two years," Agus said.

YLKI received many complaints from cellular phone customers
"but they are ashamed to reveal their names", Agus said, adding
that 30 customers asked him to bring forward their complaints a
day before the meeting.

In response to Monique's complaint, Telkomsel's technical and
engineering director Garuda Sugardo said the company would
observe her location. "We will return Monique's phone bills for
the last six months."

Raymond N. Chatab, Satelindo's division head of branch
development marketing directorate, said all operators faced
difficulties connecting calls from multistory buildings'
basements and regretted the billing problem. "Only three percent
of our bills did not reach customers this year," he said.

Ratelindo's service counter manager M. Ikhsan Ingratubun
promised to investigate Dalimonte's complaint and told him not to
pay until the matter was cleared up. "We're still new," he said.
Everyday, the company got 300 new customers and about 250
complaints, Ikhsan said

Komselindo's Operation and Maintenance General Manager Maknun
Kunadi said he would investigate the complaints.

He said that in November the company got between 250 and 300
complaints from its 95,000 customers.

Naufal Ali, the company's administration and finance general
manager, said the complaints included billing and cloning.
Cloning is when a person makes a call on the same frequency as
another cellular phone and the bill is sent to the wrong owner.
"We are working on a protection system, which will be finished by
January 1997," Naufal said.

In response to Agung's complaint, Excelcomindo customer
service manager Alba Kaligis said GSM-XL started in October and
had been flooded with customers. "So far, about 6 percent have
complained." GSM-XL now has more than 13,000 customers. (ste)