Tuesday, August 22, 2006
How many man hours does it take to send a fax in the DomRep?
A good friend of ours is for personal reasons earnestly trying to sell his property. He had passed a number of the procedural bridges and reached the advanced and important point whereby the buyer’s lawyer’s secretary called him at about 2 pm one afternoon explaining that they needed a copy of the plan of the property by closing time (6pm), in order to urgently push the sale along.
Four hours to go, our friend thought, should be straight forward, time to spare….
His first obstacle, after rummaging through his personal papers, was to discover that the plan was considerably larger than a regular A4 size and would need to be reduced before a fax could be sent. He ambled along to the local Tricom telephone call center where he unfortunately discovered that the copying machine was broken. He didn’t know of another place off hand to visit and decided, with clearly so much time to spare, to take the short journey back home where he thought he would wait for his housekeeper, Nanny, who was suposed to be turning up escorted by her husband, Perrin, on his motorcycle at 3pm, in order to engage their help.
First off he sent them to the Costa Lunga hotel where he had some time in the past used their copying and fax services. The Costa Lunga’s machine was also out of service! Nanny and Perrin persevered and three more establishments later were able to reduce the plan to A4 size and returned to our friend’s home in semi-triumph. At this precise moment the lawyer’s secretary called to ask, “Have you sent the fax?” “No, but it will be with you in the next 10 minutes”, our friend confidently added. This was because Nanny and Perrin were already off again on the motorbike, this time to the Verizon call and fax center. 30 minutes later Nanny and Perrin returned crestfallen to announce that the fax had not gone through even though they had tried four times. Our friend called the secretary assuming they had a problem with the machine at the lawyer’s end. “No problem at all!” the secretary confidently claimed. “I am sitting right beside it, it is switched on and I can confirm that the number you are using is correct”.
For the first time our friend was beginning to feel anxious about meeting the deadline, for time was marching swiftly on and all he had to show for the effort so far was an A4 reduction of the original plan. He now presumed the problem to be at the Verizon center. He was on the point of sending Nanny and Perrin off again when his landlord turned up and suggested the local pharmacy might have a fax machine. Our friend was rapidly learning the art of pragmatism. He sent the landlord off to the nearby pharmacy, Nanny and Perrin again on the motorbike further afield and he himself went to another call center round the corner. The pharmacy used to have a fax machine but no longer… and the local call center does have a fax machine but only for receiving faxes! Father time’s big hand was now pointing to the 5 on the clock as our friend returned home again and as the phone rang, the secretary asked once more, “Have you sent the fax?” “Not quite yet, but soon”, he said with discernibly less authority than before.
Very soon after that Nanny and Perrin came back with triumph written all over their faces. “It went through,” Nanny whooped. So our friend got straight on to the secretary and asked: “Have you got the fax?” “Well,” she nervously exclaimed, “no! We’ve just now figured it out at this end. We’ve noticed that there is no ink cartridge in our fax machine”.
Now our friend was not only nervous but a little something else as well, but controlling himself admirably he asked, “What now then?” “Take a note of our address and send it by regular mail”, she responded. “What! By the Dominican postal service to arrive tomorrow and it is past 5 o’clock now? (see July 22nd blog on the Dominican postal service) For heaven’s sake give me another fax number”. He could hear the secretary asking around her office if anybody had any ideas on this, and a few minutes later she was able to offer another number. The motorbike was gunned into action again and off went Nanny and Perrin and came back with yet more triumphant smiles. “It went through”, they said with their newfound glee. Even though it was now 6.15 pm our friend made his last call hoping against hope that more or less four hours work put in by three people had yielded the result he wanted. Good… the secretary was still there. Again, “Have you got the fax?” “How could I possibly know that,” she said, “the other fax machine isn’t in this office!”
So, the answer to the initial question in this case is about 12 man hours… that is if the fax arrived at all!
Posted by Playa Vista @ 08:45 AM CST
Friday, August 11, 2006
In Boca Chica television services can be served up via an aerial antenna picking up the dozen or so Dominican terrestrial channels, via satellite beamed in from the USA or by cable provided by ‘Economitel’.
Economitel has certainly served us well over the last few years and it seems as though they are planning to maintain if not improve their level of service and have even, with us at least, lived up to the economization implied by the company name, though it did happen in a round about kind of way.
The company is very local indeed serving just Boca Chica, Andres and Caleta… and small though they are they do offer a full range of approximately 70 channels with about a dozen in English and one in each of French, Italian and German. We have been paying for three connections since the time the company established itself more than 5 years ago and paying what we thought to be a very reasonable 850 pesos (about US$26) per month for this service. In July we suddenly received a bill for 1200 pesos without any prior notification of increases whatsoever. We naturally enquired of the company what this was all about, when we next time visited their office. They actually had a couple of posters up indicating that prices had been raised because they already had started increasing, and would continue to increase, the number of channels supplied and that new codified digital set-top boxes would be provided in August to further upgrade the quality of their service although those who had maintained their accounts would not be charged for these boxes.
We noted that the standard price increase was 25%, tax included, and immediately wondered why ours was closer to a whopping 50% hike. It soon became clear that they had re-categorized our usage as fully commercial, but it didn’t take us long to put two and two together and realize that if we presented our factual residential credentials then the price would naturally fall. Those credentials were verified the next day by a couple of technicians who didn’t hesitate to classify our current use as indeed purely residential.
A few days later and the front desk administrator, now with discernible reluctance, –presumably motivated by her boss who she kept on talking to in low murmurs over the phone while we “negotiated” with her – slowly recognized that she really would have to lower the tariff in line with their own very clear regulations. The final result would now be a monthly 650 pesos -a worthwhile economy of 200 pesos- and far removed from the original starting point of 1200 pesos. We couldn’t tell what the boss was muttering to himself behind his glass screen as we bid them all a good day on leaving… but for some reason he didn’t seem quite as pleased as us.
Anyway… the future certainly holds bright for Economitel if they continue to offer the considerate economy options to their long-term customers as presented to us and also introduce an alternative internet service before the end of the year as they claim they will.
Posted by Playa Vista @ 08:25 AM CST
