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