UPDATE:
My Problem Is Fixed.
Dear Carlos Slim Helú,
On July, 18 I went to the main office of your company in the Dominican Republic (CODETEL/CLARO on Kennedy Avenue in Santo Domingo) to get a land line and Internet service (ADSL).
Back than main page of Codetel website had a promotion of 3 new Internet plans (Avanzado #3, Avanzado #4 and Avanzado #5). I've asked a sales person to get me the Avanzado #5 plan, the fastest and the most expensive available (RD$5,995 per month or about US$176 per month). Now this plans are nowhere to be found on the main page, but here is the link to it: http://www.codetel.com.do/detalle-altavelocidad.html
I have a screen shot of it in case it will be removed.
After I've paid RD$1,000 (~US$30) I've been told that I will get it installed in 2 business days.
After waiting 3 days, I begun to call and complain about the fact that nobody showed up to install the service. 12 days later (10 days delay) I finally got a telephone line installed and DSL working on 1,5mbt/s instead of 5mbt/s that I originally solicited.
After calling to the technical support for the first time, I've been told that my plan says I have 1,5mbt/s, so next day I went again to your main office in Santo Domingo and was almost kicked out by a representative there who was saying in an arrogant way that Codetel have no 5mbt/s plan and 1,5mbt/s is the most advanced, most expensive and the best plan they got, so everything is set up correctly on my account.
I had to be very pushy to force CLARO sales representative to open Codetel/Claro main website and see the new promotional page about the 5mbt/s plan. She was surprised, but didn't ask any excuse. After talking to most of her colleagues at the desk and taking 30 minutes of my time she finally did changes to my account and said that my speed will be raised to 5mbt/s in 24 hours.
In 24 hours nothing happened and technical support was difficult to reach and difficult to explain problem. Automatic system in 5 out of 10 times doesn't recognize the phone number I'm entering, so I have to call for many times. Sometimes phone call in dropped when transfered from one support employee to another, so I had to call again and start everything from the beginning.
I call every day, twice a day, it takes about 20 minutes to get to a technical person, they don't want to listen to my problem and always asking what lights are lit on the modem, what type of modem I have and asking me to reset it. It never helps and each call takes about 1 hour of my time in total.
Till August, 5th techical support refused to open a support ticket, because they were saying that my account was still listed as "pending installation". On the August, 5th they finally gave me the first ticket number and promised to fix my problem within 24 hours.
Till today (almost 1 month later) I've been calling twice a day to get an update (once in the morning and once in the evening), I went to main office twice since then, I've spoke to technicians, administrators and supervisors that are extremely difficult to get. Everyone assured me that this is the last time I have to complain and in 24 hours everything will be fixed. Everyday I spent at least 2 hours talking to different Codetel/Claro representatives and they always say that this time it will be fixed in 24 hours for sure.
In 3 days it will be 1 month since I signed a contract, I'm going to receive my bill soon. Several times technician changed speed from 1,5 to 1,0 and back. Now I have 1,0mbt/s (downgraded from original speed instead of upgrading) and 5 closed support ticket numbers without any comments. And 1 is still pending that was opened today, on August, 15. 1,0mbt/s is an actual speed of connection listed in the configurations of the modem, but actual speed is about 0.8mbt/s.
I've also complaint to INDOTEL, a government organization that controls quality of service of telecommunication providers to the country, they tried to call and complain using direct line, but no result. I've spent a total of 60 hours trying to get my problem solved (trying to get the most expensive service from CODETEL/CLARO) last month without any success.
My patience is over and this is a last thing I can do is to write this public letter to you, because I can't stand this humiliation and mockery from your employees in the Dominican Republic. I want my problem to get fixed and people guilty get punished.
Hopefully I can get a prompt answer from you.
Lourdes Espinal de Lavrov
Santo Domingo,
Dominican Republic.
lourdes@lavroff.com
http://dearcarlosslim.blogspot.com/
P.S.: If someone can help me to fix english version I will appreciate it, I've done many mistakes due to the fact that it's not my native language. Original spanish version below.