Investigators Raid
Offices of the National Emergency Commission
Four Vie For
PAC Party Leadership
Tránsito On Full Alert
For Semana Santa
Vacation Deals Abound For Easter Holidays
Beer With
Ginseng
Chaparrón (Surprise
Downpour) In Full Summer!
ICE Order To
Reimburse Customers Ratified
ICE Order To
Reimburse Customers Ratified
If you are a customer of the Instituto
Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) and lets
face it who isn't in Costa Rica, you can
expect a refund from the state agency.
ICE has been ordered, again, to reimburse
its fixed line telephone customers 448
colones and cellular telephone customers 172
colones, following an order issued by the
Autoridad Reguladora de los Servicios
Públicos (ARESEP) in 2003.
Since then ICE has refused to heed to the
Aresep order. However, the Juzgado
Contencioso Administrativo has now ratified
the Aresep order which obligates ICE to give
back money to its customers.
The reimbursement goes back to the the 20
day strike action by ICE workers in 2003
when customer service operations were
suspended. The regulating authority felt
customers were paying for a service they did
not receive and thus ordered the payback.
Of course the amounts involved to each
customer does not seem much, but when you
put in context that ICE is the only provider
of telecommunications, until last year it
had a monopoly, everyone with a telephone in
2003 is affected.
So, lets do a little calculations as to what
it may cost the state agency and in reality
what it has saved for stalling payments,
since the colon has decreased in value over
the US dollar considerably in the last six
years.
If in 2003 there were 1 million fixed line
telephone customers and 500.000 cellular
customers, the amount to be paid by ICE
would equal to 534 million colones or us$1.4
million dollars at the exchange rate in
2003.
However, that many colones is valued at only
us$953,500 dollars at today's exchange rate,
a savings to the institution of
us$446.500 dollars.
|
|
|
|
|
