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