16 February, 2008

When will my ISP ever give me this unique offer?

An extract of an article from the Gulf News dated February 15, 2008:

"Bahrain's leading telecom operator Batelco on Thursday said it will credit its customers' internet accounts with 50 per cent of their monthly rental broadband charge due to the recent undersea cable damage.

While Batelco is not obliged contractually to offer any reimbursement for such unforeseen incidents, the company believes that such an occurrence, where three international cables were almost simultaneously damaged, requires a unique response."


Batelco chief executive Peter Kaliaropoulos: "We understand that, while no fault of Batelco, our customers were severely inconvenienced. Consistent with our brand values and customer care principles, we are offering this once off payment recognising the unique circumstances," he stated.

Read the complete article at the Gulf News website.

I hope some one in the customer department of our Internet Provider is reading this and takes take a cue from Batelco by offering a similar deal to the UAE Internet Community.

7 comments:

Dubai Entrepreneur said...

Batelco has competition.

Dubai Jazz said...

Disruption in Bahrian was much more severe than the UAE.

Dubai Jazz said...

In case you don't already know it, you can forward your bills of damage to the US State Department.

AbraCadabra said...

Bahrain Internet was un-usable - essentially complete disruption. Etisalat, to give credit where it's due, was nowhere close to being as bad.

Dubai Entrepreneur said...

abracadbra,

you are right. Bahrain was hit very badly. What Batelco is saying is this: we are quantifying the problem by giving up 50% of our monthly billing of all our internet customers. This is how much it costs us. Now, let us see what we can do to avoid such a loss in the future.

etisalat has better connectivity and was able to ride it out, despite the slowness, we survived it. They even provided du with access to their networks -- and made a big deal about it for their PR campaign.

Unknown said...

Hmmm... I'm with Du near the Marina and we still have only a partial service.

Du initially claimed it was the cable and then confessed to it being a software upgrade that has hit only the residential "customers". Some sites are accessible, others new (including the Gulf News).

And I very much doubt they'll refund us a bean.

Kyle said...

For what its worth, Etisalat should consider granting a discount to its subscribers. If not for anything but for P2P transfers that're still slower than a snail ;)

Dubai Jazz:

You can forward your bills to State provided you're willing to wait infinitely for a reimbursement ;)

Post a Comment

NOTE: By making a post/comment on this blog you agree that you are solely responsible for its content and that you are up to date on the laws of the country you are posting from and that your post/comment abides by them.

To read the rules click here

If you would like to post content on this blog click here