Salty LIME

• Currently playing in iTunes: One In A Million by Aaliyah

I have been saying this to every person I have an ear to, for many years now: There is no single organisation holding the Caribbean back more that Cable and Wireless in all it’s manifestations and iterations past and current.

Until we have telecomm service that is reliable, up to date and cheap we cannot continue to close the Digital Divide here in the Caribbean. As a sidenote: Until banks, in particular Barbados, open up their banking system to allow small businesses and service providers to compete globally and easily access a DEBIT card system (as opposed to a CREDIT card system) that works with PayPal and other payment processors, we will never really get past the bricks and mortar mentality and our stodgy business practises.

I visited the new ‘LIME’ web site and

1. the is still no way to sign up for landline service via this new web site
2. The rates for landline services and other packages were missing from the site as of this evening
3. There was no way to shop for mobile phones and no kind of payment processing available for merchandise that they sell in retail outlets across the Caribbean and in at least three of the countries I have recently traveled in
4. No support button anywhere that I could see, no online complaints desk, no live support via VOIP, just a few FAQs here and there that are largely unhelpful
5. No user forums, no official blogs, no kind of real update system for customers to keep them in the loop.

So is it just me, or are we getting off on the wrong foot already. My examples were only a few of other ways in which this new ’emphasis on customer service’ ignores the power of the web as a tool to interact with customers. So forgive me if I believe this is a change in Name only and retain my extreme cynicism when it comes to this organisation of which we speak.

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