Still fed up

Still fed up

Have you tried buying a starter pack phone card lately?
Satelindo states that they are completely out of stock. They
advise going to the retail stores.

Last month you could buy only the starter pack that had 500
pulses and pay about Rp 1.2 million (the official stamped price
is Rp 600,000 plus VAT). Rather too many pulses for most people
and certainly too expensive for the average budget.

Recently, the very same starter packs came with a 100-pulse
card inside for about Rp 750,000. That's right, someone had
illegally opened all the packs and replaced the 500-pulse with
100-pulse starter cards. Where did they suddenly come from? They
were sold out a month ago at Satelindo, their officials
distributors and local outlets. Can you see the picture now? Keep
in mind that places like Roxy Mas have a veritable surfeit of
stock.

It seems rather obvious, even to the average dolt, that some
people conspired many months ago to buy and stockpile all starter
card packets from 100 to 500 pulses and create an artificial
monopoly. Somebody is making a small fortune off of the public.
By the way, Satelindo has only starter packets of 1,000 pulses
available for sale.

Of course, I have been in contact with Satelindo and am slowly
working my way up the chain of command in order to get some sort
of explanation, an exercise in futility, mind you. Months ago
they knew that these packs would be sold out, but they did
nothing and kept quiet. Where I come from, the district attorney
and Internal Revenue Service would have already stepped in to
investigate a national criminal conspiracy of this nature.

At the very least, Satelindo and the other two satellite
providers have a legal and ethical responsibility not only to do
their own investigation, internally and externally, but also to
reacquire these thousands of misappropriated numbers for their
customers. I am madder now and still will not take it.

BRIEN D.

Jakarta