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)