Geoff Houston and Tony Rice and Cable and wireless is hoodwinking and bankrolling the Bahamian public. Do you know BTC plans to again reduce the margin it pays to vendors for selling phone cards and Top Up? It will be paying these vendors one cent per phone card minute while BTC will be making 19 cents per phone card/Top Up minute. Ask Houston and Rice why and how they expect the Bahamian business people to subsidize the sale of its phone cards. Most intangible and consumer products see a 30-50% mark up at the retail level. BTC is giving its vendors 5%. And if you make a mistake while doing Top Up or by chance take a counterfeit note when selling, the loss is all yours. And they are telling us they are reducing the cost and improving the quality of the product.. But are they really reducing costs when they take profit from persons who sell their product? C&W is hogging every dollar it can from the Bahamian consumer and vendor by way of BTC and exporting these 'profits' out the country.

By the way 49% of these profits go to the Bahamian Government and hopefully back to the people that elected the government.

If the vendors are to get 30-50% profit for standing beside road or ringing up the sale on a cask register, then the price to the consumer will have to go up and the whole privatisation process was to bring prices down! If the vendors can get 30-50% then why should BTC not get a similar mark up? After all it is their financial risk.

By the way have there been many comments by Digicel recently that would indicate that they are "chomping at the bit"? Not really, so the most likely competitor is Cable Bahamas and we all know their record recently.

Any body else notice that white Bahamians, Conchy-joes and smart ass white expats are not complaining about the worst communications service in the history of the Bahamas?

Not one peep from this group of know it all's no matter how lousy the white owned & operated BTC is.

Their silence is absolutely deafening.

These same people would have been having a field day with ton's of complaints daily and name calling surpassing Holy Heaven if a black Bahamian group had bought Batelco.

I am white conchy joe and despite further comments on your quite racist remarks I constantly complain at how the service at BTC is no better and even worse now that it has been privatized and many of my conchy joe family and friends say the same thing. So stop attacking the few conchy joes left in the Bahamas and take your complaints to BTC and the non conchy joe government that sold BTC in the first place. Thanks!

I agree. Black people are increasingly becoming racist and vocal. Despicable!

Farmer, that is much too polite a response to such a hateful, racist rant.

@SP we live in a independant black ruled country ,,the whites are less then 10% and run businesses and pay their national insurance for their workers unlike many prominent black company owners ,,i live on a family island and most of us perfer to do business or work for whites or winter residents,,i could see you blaming your lot in life if you were the minority ,but here your not ,and now there are more black wealthy business owners then whites ,,geez give that nonsense a rest ,,you don,t live in Alabama ,,

@ PUZZLED..no one is asking for 30-50% markup and selling cards involves more than standing besides the road, which is not as easy as it seems, or just ringing up Top Up on a machine. First of all you must have the funds available to purchase the product, either your own or borrowed money. Then you must go through the process of getting the product from BTC or its wholesalers, which involves going to the bank since many do not take cash. When BTC was operating the company they gave their vendors 25% margins, 15% for the retailers and 10% for the wholesalers. This was then reduced to 20%. B>T>C made profits at these margins. Just prior to C&W taking over the margins were reduced to 15% then to 11% and now to 9%..to be split between the wholesaler and retailer. These people must pay overhead, including light bill, rent, national insurance, staff etc. Now you ask how could BTC make a profit if they paid these persons 30-50% to sell phone cards and top up. I ask you, How could any company survive when only 5 cents of every dollar is to cover its operating expenses. In fact you couldn't get a bank loan for a 5% interest rate in this country. But satisfy your couriusity even more: Go to any business operating in this country and ask them to name any product that they sell for a 5% mark up..not even cars...I challenge you!
In fact lets make the argument more personal..Say you had a job that was paying you $500.00 a week. But you had to wear a suit every day, drive your car to work and to do the companies business, pay for your own gas and for the air condition in your office, in fact you also had to pay your secretary and for cleaning your office. So at the end of the week of the $500 you were paid, you were only left with $25.00 for your personal use. Would that job be worth your while? Well the plight of the card vendor is even worse than that. When they sell $500.00 worth of cards they are left with $25.00 *to pay* off their expenses with. Only after that they have what is left of the $25.00 for their personal use...it it worth it

@john you really need to knock this nonsense off ,,under BTC the codes were flying out the back door and we the public were paying 40cents a minute for that and an overstaffed company ,,everyone knew of places where you could buy 20$of mins for 10$ and we the public paid ,,i know many legit businesses that are quite happy to sell top up ..I and most of the productive population don,t want to pay the highest rates in the free world so our prolific babie makers can sell phone cards ,many stolen,as a career ,, we need birth control not more unfeasible made up industries by goverment that the productive people are taxed to death for ,,,

I guess in a round-a-bout way, BTC just unofficially confirmed that they are NOT making any deals with the government for that 1% that may include extending the monopoly. How much longer with PGC and the boys carry on the ruse that they are in negotiations. Wake up people, there will be no deals recapture majority share.

and the congregation said "AMEN" ,,,,,,,,,,,,

There was one incident where phone cards and pin numbers were stolen from BTC in recent times. The person that activated the pins and cards was put before the courts and sentenced to 3 years imprisonment. Since she did not name the persons whom she activated the stolen cards and pins for, she was the only one that went to jail. When you saw phone cards and pins being sold on the streets below value, they were products that were stolen from vendors or items stolen when stores were broken into, not BTC's products. There has been no reduction in the pre paid phone card rates since C&W took over BTC and I challenge you to name 3 (Bahamians say *tree*) local companies that say they are happy or even satisfied with what they are making (or losing) selling top up or phone cards...and the truth will prevail!

there are many promtions ,plans etc to get more minutes for your money...one stolen card scam in recent times ,there were alot at the old BTC,,,,how many under goverment ownership that were never prosecuted ...name a country w/ the gov as the primary employer that doesn,t go bankrupt ,, or a country w/ a birth rate and illegitamacy greater then GDP growth that doesn,t have rapidly rising crime ,poverety, and taxes despite trying to negate it w/ more public service jobs ,,,,,,you see things w/ emotion and fantasy feasible industries ,,i,m about reality ,,less public sevice jobs ,,more private growth and planned parenthood ,,its not going to happen and in 30 yrs we will be jamaica,, .haiti ,,,,,,,i,m a realist and a student of history ,,,,,,,,,,

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