jennifer rose
Nov 2, 2003, 1:51 PM
Post #6 of 14
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Re: [Carol Schmidt] TelMex
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Telmex has made a century’s worth of change in only a decade. Let me tell you about the Old Days, when:
1. A would-be customer had to buy Telefonos de Mexico stock before getting a line.
2. New phone lines cost as much as $500 USD.
3. Waits as long as two years were not uncommon.
4. You couldn’t pay your phone bill online. There were no drive-through Telmex kiosks to pay the bill, which could only be paid at Telmex or a limited number of establishments.
5. Many new neighborhoods, and deluxe ones at that, simply had no telephone lines.
6. People didn’t have cel phones. If you wanted to invite someone to a party or get a message to them, you simply went over to their house or sent a taxi with a message.
7. Going back even farther back in time, if you had an account with one phone company, you could only call others who had accounts with the same phone company.
8. Phantom charges appeared on customers’ phone bills for phone calls to places like France, and customers’ only recourse was to ante up or lose service.
9. Phone numbers were only 4 digits long….and only 3 in some places.
10. Getting the phone company to respond to any query spelled a trip down to the phone company, only to hear an excuse like “Sra. Hernandez, you told us to disconnect your line.”
People still found jobs and social lives back then. Today, many people who don’t have land line are able to inexpensively use cel phones.
Today, Telmex (at least in my area) responds to a service call within a few hours. I’ve found the Telmex personnel to be courteous and accommodating – even the last time when I thought my phone was out of order only to find that one of the phones was off the hook!
True, in Mexico it is necessary to replace wiring more frequently. Telmex is responsible only for the wiring leading to the exterior of a customer’s house. Beyond that, it’s the customer’s responsibility. And, fortunately, many Telmex workers will come back after their shifts are over and perform the work privately for a reasonable fee.
It helps to have an extra phone line, just for those times when one line fails. And to have a cel phone number as well for redundancy.
If you think you’ve got it bad where you live, go out into the very rural areas, where there is but a single phone, where “Lupita Hernandez, you’ve got a phone call” is broadcast over the P.A. Or where people line up to use the caseta de larga distancia.
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