Indonet's service

Indonet's service

Just a year ago I wrote a letter about Indonet in this column,
which seems to be the Consumers' Court of Last Resort when pleas
directly to providers of goods and especially services do not get
a response. After the letter appeared there was a great deal of
personal attention: e-mails, cookies (the eating kind, not the
computer kind), and a lunch invitation, from the president
director.

In the next months service even seemed to improve. But in the
last two months service has again deteriorated. Since the end of
1999 there has been more interruption to service than service.
Technical problems are one thing. Disregard for customers and
customer service is the real issue, and it is one that will not
be resolved by a free lunch from the owner.

Over the Y2K weekend one might have expected that local
Internet service providers would have had someone on standby to
answer calls. Not our Indonet. The highest tech countries and
organizations in the world saw fit to ensure good service by
keeping special work crews through the critical period. Not our
Indonet. When, after an Internet-less New Year's weekend I was
finally able on Jan. 3 to reach a technician at his home, his
reaction when he got to the Indonet Medan office was to threaten
the staff he thought might have given a customer his home number.
Unless an Indonet Medan customer is lucky enough to have a
problem during regular business hours, there is no way to report
a problem, let alone to get help solving it.

One reason service remains so bad is that those ultimately
responsible for the company's service, the directors and
shareholders, are well-shielded from any contact with unhappy
customers. In Medan they do not take phone calls, do not make
face to face appointments with customers, do not even disclose
their names. Marketing and Accounting are Indonet Medan's focus.
(Billing service is quite good; my bill is personally delivered
each month and collection of the payment is early).

Jakarta Indonet, where service does seem better, has little
influence over its Medan subsidiary. So again I ask Indonet,
using the most effective medium I know of to reach the
responsible executives: what will you do to ensure better
customer service in Medan?

DONNA K. WOODWARD

Medan, North Sumatra