More licks for GTT...

GTT continues to see its revenue decline.

Bypass and Economic Conditions my ass, blame DIGICEL. Gregory Dean etal must be have a ball over there at high street...that is, if those workaholics can stop long enough to savor a moment.

I wonder now if they're going to scale back on this dollar-a-minute, we hope not, we've gotten addicted to the cheapness...what?? Not like you haven't also!

What's up with Digi?

Speaking of Digicel, why the heck is Sherry Ann so red in these recent ads, tip to the graphic artist, a little less saturation please. I tell ya, these guys at Digicel and Tagman are getting really sloppy and boring. Remember Barrack Obama, what was this theme? Change? Definitely in need here for the red network.

GTT is being Naughty, Naughty....

Recently it seems as though at a certain time of the night, usually between 7-9, it becomes nearly impossible to place a call to Digicel if you’re using a GTT phone. Try it and more than likely you’ll be greeted with “Calls to this network cannot be completed, please contact the commercial office for further information” or something like that. Call into GTT customer’s service and you’ll be informed that it’s the other network that has the problem, and you will be further fed with all the bad qualities of Digicel. GTT’s CSR’s should respect the customer’s choice. If people want to have Digicel that is their choice, we live in a mostly free country and we are afforded the power of choice.

GTT is clearly sabotaging Digicel in this regard by blocking calls to their network, they need to stop this practice, it is stooping way below the belt and it’s definitely not playing on a level field for fair competition.

The ascent and descent of Digicel's commercials

How did Digicel get here is beyond me. They recently had this great ad running on television, the one with Sherry Ann Dyal and Henry Rodney. That was a super nice one, the music was catchy, the coloring excellent, apart from casting Rodney in the video, it was flawless. Why they’re no longer showing it is beyond me. However they’ve replaced that one with a comical, utterly ridiculous and pure nonsense of an ad featuring three jackasses in the form women parading their ‘Pre-paid bundle plan”.

Just when you get tired of freaking Radika all over the fucking place and you think nothing can be more annoying to the ear (except Charmaine Blackman and DJ Stress of course) here comes Digicel to spoil the moment by unleashing this on the Guyanese people. This wasn’t just mildly annoying and obnoxious like so many other people – this was obnoxious and stupid in a different and worse way and I can’t help but think that the people who came up with this idea, just talked for the sake for talking…a classic case of Diarrhea of the mouth; constipation of the ideas.

Instead of appealing for a license for international services, Digicel should be appealing for some creative people over there, their marketing team is beginning to get it wrong and it’s time for some fresh ideas in your ad’s. Your graphic artists (not just the local ones) are becoming stale and there is nothing creative about the print ad’s being produced either. Has the brain drain spread to you guys as well that you have artists without proper mental and creative faculties that they can’t make diverse ads? They’re suddenly appearing to be as useful as a windshield wiper on a goat's ass…yea, it’s that freaking bad.

Do us all a huge fucking favor and get those pre-paid asses off the blasted television and radio!!!

Cricket without rain...not in Guyana

The rain has arrived and interupted the cricket. Now really, who is surprised at this? It wouldn't be cricket in Guyana without some rain.
Let's hope the rain doesn't stay too long.

On another note though, why are members of the West Indies team wearing white tape over the Digicel logo on their uniforms?
We'll wait and see

What is the matter with some people. They complain just because they can

Cut off using Digicel’s ‘Free after 3’

By Stabroek staff | March 18, 2009 in Letters

Dear Editor,

It is really frustrating to use Digicel’s ‘Free After 3,’ and get cut off after a few minutes; You call again and you’re cut off again. To make it worse, you get a text telling you to text a number to win fabulous prizes. However, these texts cost fifty dollars each. I called Digicel’s Customer Care several times and was given some stupid excuses − You pressed a wrong button, or your party must have hung up on you, etc. The government and the PUC should do something about this practice. Consumers must get what they pay for. Most people do not bother to check, so they are not aware that there is a problem. More people should check to see what they’re getting.

Yours faithfully,
M S Baksh
Editor’s note

We sent a copy of this letter to the Public Relations Officer of Digicel for any comments he might wish to make, and received no response.

Now look at this wretch complaining. True the system is not 100%, there are times when you get errors. On any networks, calls are dropped from time to time. No mobile company can claim to be an exception.

Maybe this person should check their blasted phone for the problem, maybe your friend isn't getting a proper signal on their phone, or maybe their party just cannot bear to listen to their annoying squeak of a tone for three minutes. Why not provide Digicel with your address and ask them for your own tower...wretch!

Yes Digicel does offer promotions using their text messaging service but terms and conditions apply. EVERYBODY knows that, and EVERYBODY knows that those messages cost more to send than a regular text message. Oh shucks, imagine cross dressing is a crime but stupidity isn't. I realize that you like things either free or cheap and as much as you get a lot of those from Digicel, you still want to win fabulous prizes for either free or cheaply. Be realistic Cheapskate! It is a marketing strategy. Cellink is currently doing it also, only thing is, their prize of a ticket to the Bollywood/Chutney/Soca party isn't so fabulous but still they are charging 'premium rates'.

And one final point to note is that the CSR's at Digicel aren't going to tell you nonsense like you pressed the wrong button...that's just nonsense, lying nonsense if you asked me.

No I am not the PR officer that Stabroek News sent this letter to.

Digicel's at it again

I must say, Digicel must really be bustin' their brains to come up with a good campaign to counter GTT's $1 a minute promo. Unfortunately to me, their latest gimmick of having music as the ring indicator when calling someone is a failed attempt at matching GTT's current promo. Even the TV commericial currently airing on the stations proves this point. It's just not impressive to call someone and have to hear music at the ring indicator. It just might confuse the caller that they've reached voicemail and thus prompting them to hang up ... c'mon, how often do you leave a voicemail for someone?
I for one am not paying money for such a stupid service. If I wanted to hear music, I'd turn on the radio or just download the blasted thing.
C'mon Digicel, stop being so petty and do something good. You're really letting us down.

(Cultured note)
Class, I am going to disagree with you on this one. I really think that Digicel's Free Night Talk has done exceptionally well against dollar talk. This latest promotion I don't believe is aimed at Cellink's dollar talk, but rather it is just a fun service from Digicel.
I will agree with you those is that this new service makes no sense to pay for the damn tune. If I wanted to hear the song, I'd just blue tooth the entire thing. Rest assured, it will be gone shortly.

A Letter to Kaieteur News about Digicel

Ok, so I was reading some letters sent to Kaieteur News and this particular one drew my attention. The caption reads -- 'This round goes to Digicel'. The letter then goes on to talk about physically challenged people competing against able-bodied people. How the fuck does that in anyway relate to Digicel?

Now, that got me a bit on the edge, but the last few lines got me really riled up.

Digicel, I have to give this round to you with your advertisement featuring Henry Rodney and Sherry Ann Dyal. It was an ideal and wise decision to use this particular pair. I enjoy every second of the ad.

Henry Rodney was a wise decision? Really? Why would Sherry Ann dream of talking to him?

Then came this line -

Another impressive drama character who would create an impact is Sonia Yarde. If she is available, maybe you should seriously consider her for your next promo ad.

Sonia may have done well in the Singer TV commercials, but would Digicel really want the former fraud-committing, jail-time-spending woman-in-law in their ads? I THINK NOT.

GTT Sucking Blows because of Digicel....

Well it was bound to happen. GTT has seen their revenue decreasing with the entry of Digicel to the local market two years ago.
It was reported that for the past fiscal year, GTT saw their revenue decline US$700,000. I imagine that Gregory Dean (digicel ceo) and his staff are having a ball with this news.

What did GTT expect though, after years of providing crappy service to the people of this country and charging excessively for those services. People flocked to Digicel like the local girls (and boys) chasing after rich white men and this is the result.

I guess this is probably the main reason why they are not going to relinquish their monopoly on international calling. Can you imagine how much worse those statements would look if they weren't receiving all that money from international calling.

Some pay might feel bad for GTT but I don't. For years they were making an abundance of money off the Guyanese people for a lousy service, money that found it's way to that white man in Boston. 100 % Guyanese??...Hell No!!!, it's actually 80% American!!!

A Lesson for GTT...

For our Blue Cell phone company, I'm going to offer a lesson in adjectives today, especially in their comparative and superlative forms.

Now the first word is. GOOD. Comparative Word would be BETTER (obviously because we are comparing between two entities) and the superlative form would be BEST.
So the progression goes: Good, Better, Best (we know this since primary school though, thanks to Junior English Revised)

Second word is, and this is easier than the previous one. STRONG. The comparative word would be STRONGER and the superlative form of the word would be STRONGEST.
This progression goes: Strong, Stronger, Strongest.

Now keeping that in mind, we come to the point of this confabulation of ours. There are two cell phone companies in this country being GTT and Digicel. Digicel's slogan is "The Bigger Better Network" Whilst GTT proclaim themselves to be "Best Network, Strongest Signal"...WRONG WRONG, WRONG GTT!!! Simple primary school english tells you that you are wrong. If you can't even get your slogan right, (which is probably one of the easiest tasks to get done) how the heck are you intending to get your entire network right? The proper phrasing should be "Better Network, Stronger Signal", GTT Ya hear, you guys are setting a bad example, fix it!

Most grade 5 students know that when you are comparing two things, the comparative form of the word is used (Ok, granted kids might not know the rationale for using them, BUT they know that when there are only TWO, the second form is used) so if school kids can get this right, why the heck can't the folks at GTT get that right? are they that starved for intelligence and simple English skills over there that they cannot get a few words grammatically correct? GTT should be ashamed of themselves.

Some people are not fans of Digicel but one cannot deny that they really do pay meticulous attention to even the small things. GTT, still leaves much to be desired.

Come on Digicel, rid us of those internet charges

No people, I'm not picking on Digicel, it's just that when you use their service you are entitled to ask, even demand certain things from them, so I'm just doing that. I'm fulfilling my role as a customer.

So here I go again. Like many persons (myself included) when Digicel entered the Guyana market we rushed to switched to them because they were fresh and new, with such great promise, but more importantly we had gotten tired of lame ass, exploiting Cellink. But in the time that Digicel has been here, Cellink has made some great improvements to their networks and I must say that they have done a good job. They're giving the red company a good fight for their money and in the end that is just great for the customers. Competition is great. Unlike some people, I do not want GTT to just fold over and let Digicel have the entire mobile market because then we're right back where we were before...so now for customers it just comes down to preference while some people don't make that choice and eventually carry around two phones (myself included).

I have a tendency to ramble on when I get started but here is the gist of this entry, I would like to know if Digicel ever does intend to stop charging us to use the internet on our phone? It's about damn freaking time don't you think? The other network has free internet browsing so why is Digicel charging their customers to use this service? And I must add, it's not a very small charge either. With that in mind, can they really and honestly call themselves "THE BIGGER BETTER NETWORK" I severely doubt that. I have to wonder if they haven't realized that one of the reasons that a lot of Cellink subscribers have retained their numbers is simply because they would like to browse the net and not have to pay for it? Come on Digi, if I wanted to use the net and pay for it, I would find myself at an internet cafe where it costs much less to browse. You guys should really eradicate this particular charge and please don't even get me started on the fact that I have NEVER EVER won anything on a Digicel promotion. That's for another day though...

Digicel -- Sleep Deprivation

Free Night Talk eh? I'm guessing your aim is to deprive the Guyanese people of sleep just so they can use your so-called free service.

Don’t worry GT&T Cellink, we’re coming for you too.

A little question for the people at Digicel

Last week on the latest edition of the Shonette Moore show, Digicel's Mr. Donovan White again made known the fact that his company is ready for SMS interconnect. While stating that this service is a basic one for telephone companies around the world and not a service that incurs much cost to provide or use.

Now, it has been proven that TEXT messages cost little or nothing to transmit between users, why then does Digicel charge somewhere around $10 per message?

After years of swindling the Guyanese people, GTT has righted themselves and are now charging $1 per message (I Love them for that), in part because they know that sending these messages cost them little or nothing to send, regardless of how many are sent.

Now, the people at Digicel might think that the Guyanese people are ungrateful because quite frankly, without them we'd still be stuck with the previously lame Cellink and they're extravagant costs for calls and messages, but be that as it may, Cellink has corrected themselves so why then is Digicel still charging so much? and can they morally criticize GTT for charging so much on overseas calls?

No Affiliation

In light of a recent comment made about one of our posts (read the post and the comment)I’d like to point out that in no way are we affiliated with either GT&T or Digicel. All thoughts, comments, criticisms and such like are personal and do not bear any favoritism towards Digicel nor their competitor GT&T.

GT&T, Getting worse all the time

So I just saw the most recent Cellink advertisement which seeks to respond to Digicel's Free Night Talk and I must say that without a shadow of doubt, it is ridiculously horrible, one of the worst ad's to have come from GTT in a while.

What's the matter with GTT? Are they paying too much money to HJTV that there is little left to make some proper advertisements? I know that GuyEnterprise wasn't very good with your ads (at least the video ones) but come on, you've gotten much worse since leaving them.

This latest offering appears to have come from some bottom house business, it looks beyond cheap. Who the heck are doing your ads now? Seems like you're giving Astro Arts some work to do because they're the only agency in this country I think that would make such bad ads. This wasn't just plain ole terrible, this was fancy terrible, this was terrible with whip cream on top and it's even worse when you realise that the Digicel ad they are responding to is one of the best, well produced ads, currently airing on television. Did their advertising people not see the digicel ad? Could they not have given the public something much much better than this big load of crap?

The people who created and approved that advertisement is living proof that many men..and woment, exist without brains or talent.

Digicel's Mr. White on the Shonette Moore Show.

On the last edition of her show, Shonette featured Mr. Donovan White from Digicel who was seemingly there to only plug his company’s benefits. And while there is nothing wrong with him doing that (after all they do sign his paycheck), I’m just curious about the facilitator of this happening.

Shonette, Shonette, Shonette when are you going to remove that OMFG thing from your head? It looks horrendous for someone who is constantly on television, in a ‘starring’ role at that. It has been very clear to most ardent television viewers that Ms. Moore is a horrible hostess and it was hardly more apparent than on this edition with Mr. White. Why was she staring blankly at the camera and just nodding uncontrollably? She was hardly encouraging the man or even asking him purposeful questions…come on Shonette, not just because the show bears your name, it means that it’s all about you. I guess it’s true, you do have a large…ego!

And finally, this is what I’m really curious about. Why was she using her personal show which has usually been dedicated to entertainment to promote Digicel? Is this a new amendment to your contract with Mr. Graham at the strapped-for-cash Tagman?

Gotta give the Digicel people credit though, they certainly do know how to get the best benefits for their money, and they seem to know everywhere that they can seek out some advertising.

Digicel’s new ad – Free Night Talk.

Ok, who’s seen this ad?  If you have, then you’ll agree with me and say it’s nice.  Yes, it is nice except for one thing – the appearance of Henry Rodney.   What came to mind immediately upon seeing the ad was the thought of Beauty and the Beast.  It’s like watching the dented ass of a gorilla prance around and sing.  Don’t get me wrong – Henry Rodney’s a great comedian and probably a great guy, but unfortunately he wasn’t very pleasing to watch in the ad.  Sherry-Ann Dyal on the other hand looked great but I doubt she would want to talk all night with Henry.  I don’t know what Digicel was thinking, but choosing Mr Rodney to appear in their advert was a wrong choice.  

Digicel Responds to $1 per minute

Well it was only a matter of time before Digicel responded to Cellink's latest promotion. A promotion that I must admit was destined to be very successful. How can you compete with $1 per minute...well us Guyanese would know that there is only one thing better than $1...FREE.

So here it is, digicel latest offering will be along these lines: Make two, three minute calls and get to talk all night FREE. Isn't that cool or what for all those who just love to talk on and on and on (myself included).

Some of you might have notice those strip ads running in the papers "All Night Long" or "Night Owls Wanted"...well now you have an explanation.

Competition is great...Keep it going guys, it's getting better and cheaper for all of us.

GPL and their lame ass new advertisement

GPL recently unveiled a new ad aimed at persuading customers to not steal that oh so valuable and much needed commodity.

Long long ago people started saying that human needs are limited to food, clothing and shelter but as time has progressed, shouldn't we also now consider our electricity and telephones as necessities as well?

Anyways as I said above, electricity is much needed for everyone and its too expensive for the majority of people. GPL is now telling the public to not steal electricity but to acquire it the proper (legal) way. Fine so far but what happens when someone tenders an application for this service but has to wait many many months to get their service. Is that person expected to live electricity free until the powers to be at GPL finally decide to look at the pending application? That doesn't make sense does it?

Moving on now, one of GPL complaints is that the cost of electricity is so high because people are stealing and the paying customers need to offset this cost, but would someone please tell GPL that most people steal electricity because the cost at which GPL supplies it is too high. I'm sure the idiots they have working there know that already though.

By no means, am I condoning the actions of those persons stealing electricity but GPL needs to get their house in order and provide a PROPER, RELIABLE service to the people of this country. Guyanese are already benefitting from having Digicel operating here it's sad, real sad that we cannot get a competitor for GPL, maybe then things might get better. I've given up wishing though, now I've resigned myself to a life of deep sadness. After nearly 43 years of independence, Guyana isn't going anywhere!

Sorry to say Digicel but GT&T is the better value...(at the moment)

Sorry digi, I love you, I’ve loved you for about two years now but sadly I gotta say, Blue has got ya beat right now. I hope that the global economic crisis hasn’t hit you as well so you’re now forced to cut blah blah time in half. Blue in the meanwhile just costs $1 per minute after 10 accumulated minutes of talk during the day. Right now, in these hard times, a person has to go where they’re pockets can take them and that just happens to be blue who does have the better value at the moment.
I’m sure red will bounce back though and I’m waiting patiently...