Bogota Blogger

Like just about everyone living in Bogota, I have had coflicts with the phone company, known as ETB. Many months I would sign up for some sort of long distance plan, which would usually involve getting a package of minutes for a certain price to the US. One month, when I paid $100,000 pesos for unlimited calls to one US number and a discounted rate on other US numbers, when the bill arrived I had been charged almost $1.00 US per minute for every call.

Now, the only way to deal with ETB is to go to an office, take a number, and wait an hour or several hours. There happens to be an office near my house, so I went in about five minutes before closing, when it was slow, got my number, and then refused to leave when they asked me to come back another day because they wanted to close. One of the first things you learn in Bogota is to be persistent, you MUST be persistent, if you want to ever get anywhere.

We looked at my account,  and it showed where I had ordered the plan. Then it showed where the plan had been changed to one for calling Egypt, and had a customer name that was not mine and an address that was about three miles from where I live. The wrong name and obviously incorrect address didn’t impress the customer service rep, who insisted that since Egypt was on my account, that was what I had ordered. What DID impress him was that I just kept repeating my argument, adding nothing new, over and over and over until he finally decided to agree with me to get me out of the office.

So, he went through the process of removing every one of my US calls individually from my bill, which took about 20 more minutes. Then he tried to print out a new bill, but since the bill had already been paid (my school pays the bills), this wasn’t possible, and I was told I would get a credit the following month (which meant three months later, since they run three months behind in billing). Imagine how confident I was when he told me that.

Three months later I had no credit, but had all my paperwork from before, and went again to the same office about 15 minutes before closing.  The rep recognized me, pulled me out of line, and handled the whole thing in about three minutes. 

Long Distance Plans

The next month, I called to cancel one of my long distance plans (you have to call monthly to find out the plans and arrange them), but it was the third day of the month when I called. I actually had a Colombian friend make the call, because my telephone Spanish isn’t so great. They refused to cancel the plan because it was not before the 1st of the month. Then they wanted to ask me a billion questions to reconfirm, such as my address, cedula (Colombian ID) number, employer, etc. Jose was relaying these questions to me, and finally I told him to tell them that I didn’t want to answer any questions. So, to punich me, ETB CANCELLED MY PLAN right there on the spot!!!!

How ETB Treats Customers

Like many businesses in Colombia, ETB doesn’t realize that good customer service would eventually lead to reduced costs and increased revenues.  Their philosophy is to abuse, deny, refuse to discuss it. Until recently, they had a policy that they would not DISCUSS a possible error on their part (there are many thousands of errors, according to the word on the street) unless you first PAID the incorrect bill. Imagine how much leverage you then had to get corrections made.

Now, finally, they are prohibited by law from forcing customers to pay incorrect bills. They have to talk to you about it. But, that doesn’t mean they can’t cut off your phone service while the discussion is going on. That’s progress though.

Lessons Learned

Dealing with ETB, and having the determination, time, and persistence to see it through taught me some good lessons about how to get along in Bogota. First, business people you deal with will likely NOT be willing to apply logic to a problem–it’s just not part of the culture.

So, if you can’t reason with someone, how can you get a problem rectified? By refusing to yield. Hold your ground. Keep saying what you already said before. There will come a point where the person you are arguing with will just say, “OK, I’ll do what you want,” and that’s the end of it.

From what I can tell, the general philosophy of people who work in almost any business is to tell the customer he is wrong, misinformed, unprepared, whatever, and to refuse to serve him. But, with just a little persistence, you find that you CAN get what you want–it’s just that the person dealing with you wanted to be forced to do the work. As soon as they think you won’t go away, they’ll happily do whatever you need done. Then, next time you show up, you are best friends.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 10th, 2007 at 10:31 am and is filed under Logic Doesn't Apply, Daily Life in Bogota, Customer Service. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.