October 25, 2002

Dear Sir,

One would have thought that after the recent debacle when it seemed that every CableVision subscriber on the Island had less than nothing to say in favour of Bermuda CableVision that the company might, however slightly, have improved its service just marginally in order to combat the incredibly bad press which it had received during hostilities.

But sadly, this has not only not been the case but I am convinced that Cable are making errors at present which they never thought of before, such as:

1. Their clock, on the reception box which they issue to subscribers, at one time reasonably efficient, except that it became slower and slower until someone complained that they were missing the opening or closing frames of the film which they had recorded. Now, on two afternoons during this week, the clock has performed the most amazing antics, jumping an hour or two forward or aft and if one attempted to set up an unattended recording during these periods the mechanism would lock up so that one could not complete the data entry. One had to abandon the operation and do it later when the clock had returned to (near) normal. Just last evening after a day of clock antics I noticed that it was running well over three minutes slow and still is this morning. So you'll miss the first few minutes of whatever you choose to record.

2. Many channels which one knows are normally broadcast in colour, during the daytime revert to a poor quality black and white format which you would not want to be viewing.

3. They appear to be more prone now than previously to slipping items with fancy names onto their billing, presumably in the hope that the customer will either not notice or not understand the pseudo-technical term for the item charged, and pay it.

4. The break-up of the picture on digital channels into a myriad of coloured squares, whilst the sound does something along the same lines has always been a problem beyond their capability and remains so now after some three or four years. Is it that they don't know how to fix it or maybe it is merely that they don't give a damn. No reason why they should - government quite obviously doesn't give damn so why should they?

All in all they have got to be the lousiest commercial operation outside of south-east Asia. Government might as well nationalise the operation - it could not get much worse if they did.

VIEW PEMBROKE