Tyranny at TSTT
October 05, 2003
by Dr Winford James
The other day, I was very upset with TSTT - more precisely, with staff at their Trincity Mall office. I had gone there, on advice from their Help Desk, to get a terribly malfunctioning phone exchanged, but two agents subjected me to so much unnecessary pressure that were I not a man of long-suffering civility, practised patience, and not a little insistence, I would have, mission unaccomplished, either taken steps to mash the place up or left in acquiescent disappointment. I stayed and took TSTT's uncivil service, resisted stoutly but fairly quietly, and walked away with a new phone.
The offensive phone was a Nokia product, model 3320, and, for more than a month, it had been serving me extremely poorly. Apart from its battery holding charge for only half a day, one minute it was allowing me to make and receive calls, the next it was not, giving me the implacable, immovable notices 'No service' and 'Wait for service'. At first, when the notices came on during the workweek, I would keep pressing the send button to force them into retreat, as routinely happened on free-call Sundays. And, obeah of obeahs, the phone would ring, and I would think, in accordance with some way of thinking unknown to science, that that was the way to end the stupidness. But subsequently, when repeatedly that tack failed to budge the notices and I felt like strangling the implement, I realised that I had been a superstitious idiot.
Then one day the one-minute-next-minute alternation between service and no service was replaced by no service for an entire day. I moved in the same localities where I had been accustomed getting good service. All around me people with TSTT phones were making and receiving calls. But I couldn't. The matter was frustrating and vexatious. My phone was operating on a post-paid arrangement, which meant that whether I was able to make and receive calls or not I would have to pay a fixed minimum fee to TSTT. The situation was simply wrong. I could bear it no more, so I called the Help Desk.
The female agent who answered was cordial and encouraging. She listened to my complaint, told me that my Nokia had a history of troublesomeness, asked me if the phone was still under warranty and if I had the warranty, and advised me to go to the supervisor of any TSTT cellular phone outlet where, if I produced the warranty, I would be given a new phone in exchange for the old one and, if I didn't, I might be given one at the discretion of the supervisor.
I am typically a busy man, but I made time and went the next day to Trincity Mall. I went well before the opening time of 11 am and competed with others to get in early when the doors opened. I was lucky to get in quickly and was soon called by an agent (let's call her Rosie). I laid out my complaint to Rosie and it appeared that she was not listening. She asked me if I had come to activate my phone. Lord! In slow, very deliberate tones, I told her to listen carefully to what I was saying. She asked me for the warranty and I said I had looked but couldn't find it, but that the information was all in TSTT's database on her computer. She replied that without the warranty I would have to either repair the phone or buy a new one. I slowed my breathing and the upward rush of blood and serenely told her that I wanted nothing less than a new phone. She went for her supervisor who pleasantly supported her. It was time for me to raise my voice beyond the level at which she could comfortably hear me.
Rosie pounced on another of my apparent disqualifications: I was not a TSTT customer since the computer showed that it was my wife who had bought the phone and transferred ownership to me. TSTT did not deal with non-customers and, in any event, once a phone had been transferred, the warranty ceased. Rubbish and nonsense, I said. My wife had bought the phone as a birthday gift for me and so had taken steps to place it my name. To argue that I was not a TSTT customer because I was not the original purchaser was to 1) deny that TSTT had participated in the transfer; 2) be behaving as if it was the owner and not the phone that was under warranty; and 3) suggest that phones bought as gifts for loved ones would lose their warranty. Bull, rubbish, and nonsense. I declared that I had become annoyed.
Rose went to her supervisor again. She came back with a concession: It was not normal practice but they would make an exception in my case and give me a new phone. Nonsense again, I interrupted. I deserved the new phone because the Nokia 3320 was a bad phone that had given me poor service under warranty, which warranty the computer showed to be still in effect. Rosie continued dutifully. I could have a choice of what was then available - the Nokia 6210 with a GSM platform (the 3320 worked on TDMA) or a Samsung R220 (I think), but without a warranty. Less combative now, I observed that it was a continuation of the tyranny to exclude the warranty and that what TSTT should do was to give me a warranty for the unexpired period of the warranty on the old phone.
Rosie went to her supervisor again and came back with the news that I would have the warranty, but that they would treat me as a new customer, in which case I would have to produce a utility bill for verification of my address. I told her I hadn't brought any along, secure in the knowledge that TSTT had the necessary records. She insisted that I go home and get one and, worse, take a number when I came back, and join the line of waiting customers. I told her I could not and would not do that, that her position was tyranny and terror. Stalemate. Long moments passed. Then I produced a bank statement with my address, which was reluctantly accepted. Everything went smoothly after that, though the process of registering for the new Nokia was painfully long.
The phone is working well and, in particular, the battery holds charge for three days. But do you know that the registering agent, someone other than Rosie, assured me that it would hold charge for some seven days? In which case, is the phone working well?
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