Claro Customers Switching to Digicel Will Pay 2x Previous? Disgruntled Customer Explains.

If your interested in maximizing your money, then you should be concerned about the outcome of the possible merger in the telecoms sector. The outcome will impact call rates and the resulting cost of doing business or cost of survival.

The following is how one Claro customer makes the situation clear about how the outcome will affect him. This letter was published in the Sunday Gleaner January 15, 2012.

At the time of the announcement that the ‘takeover’ was now complete, Digicel suggested that its acquiring Claro was good for Jamaica. I disagree.

The basis of my disagreement is this – it will now cost me more money to make calls to my other Claro (now Digicel) numbers and to LIME numbers. With my Claro deal, I had a closed-user-group (CUG) plan with approximately 20 persons. This provided my business with significant savings, which is the reason I took the plan in the first place.

The breakdown

I will break it down for you. As a Claro customer, I paid $4 per minute to make a Claro-to-Claro (out-of-CUG) call, $5 per minute to call LIME and Flow phones, and $10 per minute to call Digicel phones.

Now as a kidnapped Digicel customer, I will pay $10/$8 per minute (peak and off-peak) for Digicel-to-Digicel calls and $14/$13.80 (peak and off-peak) to call LIME phones. I object that I am now being asked to pay more for the same service, with a network that was not my preference. This is extortion.

Digicel’s customers may not be aware, or even care that they pay this much for their calls, but I do. It is an operational saving for my business that has now been eroded by this decision.

Will you be impacted by the possible merger?