Consumers continue to flood OUR with complaints

THE privately-operated Jamaica Public Service Company (JPSCo) has been rated the worst utility provider in terms of consumer complaints, following by telecommunications carrier Cable & Wireless Jamaica (C&WJ), according to data released by the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR).

At the same time, the OUR said, consumers of the state-owned National Water Commission (NWC) has either experienced improvement in service quality and or had the least reasons to complain about the service they have received.

In its quarterly performance report for April to June 2001, the OUR said the overall complaints reflected "somewhat of an entrenchment of the JPSCo in the position of the utility that attracts most consumer complaints."

The OUR, noting that there was a dramatic increase in consumer complaints about telecommunications services, said C&WJ "has been the utility about which consumer complaints has been growing at the fastest rate." Within the same period, the NWC was the only of the utilities against which there has been a reduced number of complaints.

As was the situation during the past review period, the OUR said, the majority of residential utility service concerns were again about electricity service. However, residential customers of telecommunications provider C&WJ registered the most frequent complaints about service quality. Most complaints from commercial customers were also against the JPSCo.

FREQUENT POWER OUTAGES

The OUR said billing matters and unscheduled interruption in service dominated all categories of complaints. Equipment damage, a complaint mostly raised by JPSCo customers, increased during the quarter, and was attributable to the frequent power outages experienced during the period. But the OUR noted that "power cuts in and of themselves do not necessarily cause damage to equipment."

Disconnections mostly experienced by NWC and JPSCo customers "also assumed some level of significance as a complaint category for the reporting period," the OUR said.

According to the report, complaints about "lack of communication and unsatisfactory responses" were far more significant than "untimely responses" provided consumers by the utilities. "The persistence of these factors as motivators for consumers bringing their grouses to the OUR suggests the continuation of important shortcomings in the customer relations operations of the utility providers generally," said the report.

The OUR said the first set of consumer contacts about services provided by cellular telephone provider Digicel were registered during the review period. All three contracts were referrals, and having been referred to the provider none has been returned to the OUR's Consumer Affairs Department as formal complaints. "It is hoped that this pattern will be maintained," the OUR said.

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