Don’t get me wrong. That was not intended to be a good thing.

On the positive end, if you happen to have Tigo service it will likely work very well and, if there is an issue, the technical people likely can solve it. On the technical end, they seem far better than Claro.

That said, I just put myself on the Starlink waiting list. Their customer service is far worse than any word I can think of to describe it. Reliably that bad. Here is today’s story.

I was about to pay my bill (on-line — but I have to pay it through a bank because their on-line page won’t talk to me as I use a VPN and my IP address is not in Guatemala) when it seemed to be a bit high. I looked at the itemized list of charges and say ViX+ for Q45. There was an ad for ViX+ on the bill so at least it was easy to figure out what I was being charged for. Apparently some sports channel.

Now, as much as you might think that an Internet service provider would have a way to inquire/change your account information, it does not. You choices are to either ask them to telephone you or go to their office. As I never answer my phone unless it is from someone I know, I walked to their office. Well, actually, twice. I had assumed they would be open by 9AM but they weren’t. Today I stopped by at about 1030AM. Amazingly, there was no line.

Now, I had been planning to lower my Internet velocity for months (I have a 100Mb connection which is way more than I need but it has happened as a result of “free automatic upgrades that cost later”) but I didn’t want to have to deal with them. With this new problem I figured I could endure the aggravation to get two things fixed.

I got a rep who I figured has been doing his job for maybe a day, probably less. I explained the two things I wanted to do (get rid of ViX+ and change the internet velocity. We started with the ViX+ item — it was easy to explain as it was a line item on the bill. He told me what it was. He asked me if I called the US a lot. He pointed out that Q6.52 on my bill marked as “additional out of plans calls” was additional out of plan calls. … But, mostly, he kept asking the rep at the next table about everything.

After about 20 minutes and probably 1000 keystrokes on his part we had that issue resolved. He explained that a credit memo would be issued in the next 3 to 5 days. Whatever.

Now on to the speed change. I said (in Spanish, of course) that I wanted the slowest velocity offered with an upload speed of greater than 5Mb. (I had previously looked this up on their site and, I think it was 40Mb but what is there in promotions changes every day.) He must have looked at 20 or 30 Tigo web pages and asked the reps on either side of him more questions. He finally decided the answer was 40Mb. OK, fine.

He now had to ask his “neighbors” more questions. Oops, my service can’t be changed until the credit memo is processed. So, yes, I would have to come back to make that change.

I just paid my $9 deposit for Starlink. It is supposed to become available the Q3 2023. Gee, that could be tomorrow.