Complaints from Liberty subscribers continue to pour in, says staff of the Public Services Commission. But the majority of them are not being ventilated through official channels, and thus cannot be addressed.
Members of the Public Services Commission learned on Tuesday that PSC staff had logged 70 complaints within the territory, of which 17 had been resolved overall. “Concerns range from issues with customer service, billing, number portability, service, and overall coverage,” said Tisean Hendricks, PSC assistant executive director.
However, the agency’s director Sandra Setorie noted that this was just a small piece of the true picture. “The complaints that are allowed and reported on here do not include complaints that we continue to track via social media platforms and other platforms, and those numbers are much, much higher,” she told commissioners.
Social media complaints about Viya have increased in the past three weeks as well, Ms. Setorie informed commissioners, but those have not translated into official grievances filed with the PSC. The same held true for the Water and Power Authority.
When questioned about what her team could do to encourage those complaining on social media to make their concerns official, Ms. Setorie noted that the agency could only go so far to assist. “We do as much as we are allowed to do…by law, in terms of getting individuals to file complaints with the PSC,” she told commissioners, explaining that staff respond to social media posts by telling users how to access the online complaint forms.
Regarding the large volume of complaints against Liberty, Ms. Hendricks acknowledged that “there was a disparity” between the PSC’s records and what the telecoms company has in their records. “There’s a possibility that some of the complaints have been resolved, but we have not been notified by Liberty,” she advised, saying that a meeting between PSC and Liberty staffers was needed to synchronize the data.
Christian Trinidad, a claims manager for Liberty, agreed with Ms. Hendricks that there were discrepancies in numbers, but swiftly sought to deflect implicit blame she had placed on the company. “I just want to stress on the fact…that our only source for our numbers are uniquely the emails that we received from the PSC,” he stated, declaring that only 3 cases remain open out of the 77 referred since January.
PSC Commissioner Pedro Williams was incredulous, wondering whether Liberty did not have internal monitoring mechanisms for customer complaints, including social media scans. “I work with claims that have been officially filed within the PSC,” Mr. Trinidad said. Commercial Sales Director Catherine Kling told commissioners that the Liberty social media team is restricted in their ability to reach out to customers based on the rules of companies such as Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. Liberty is only allowed to respond to customers to interact on the company’s page directly, or who tag a member of staff in their personal posts.
Former customers who ported their number to a different service provider are grappling with being unable to receive calls from current Liberty customers, Ms. Hendricks described. Current customers are claiming that duplicate charges are showing up on bills, she said, while dropped calls and poor coverage continue to be a problem. “We need to set a date so that we can actually review the outstanding complaints in detail and we can get some consensus as to when we'll be able to resolve these pending and outstanding complaints for the customers,” Ms. Hendricks said.
Mr. Trinidad and Ms. Kling agreed that a meeting was urgently needed to reconcile those numbers and rectify any lingering issues.
