Customers left without service during the major Flow outage that started on Sunday can expect compensation. The telecommunications provider has announced that all services have now been fully restored and rebates will be applied to affected accounts.
In an update issued Monday night, Flow said the disruption, which occurred between Sunday night and Monday, was caused by a damaged subsea fibre.
It said it does not anticipate any further service interruptions at this time.
As a gesture of goodwill, Flow said that all customers will receive a rebate automatically applied to their accounts. Prepaid customers will receive complimentary credit, while business customers will be notified individually about their rebates.
“Flow recognises the impact this outage has had on our valued customers,” the company said in a statement.
The telecommunications provider also thanked customers for their patience and understanding during what it described as a rare and challenging situation.
The company said the outage affected not only Saint Lucia but also customers in Dominica and Grenada because of the interconnected nature of its regional network infrastructure.
The outage was serious enough for Flow to classify it as a “crisis-level event”. The company had activated its Regional Network Disaster Response and Recovery Centre and local Crisis Management Team as it worked to restore service.
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I still stand by my former comment: “It could’ve been worse!”
At least FLOW has owned the event, and are willing to compensate – kudos to them.
If the compensation is not a month free then it’s not worth it. We have to look into the factor of business and everyone’s day to day life was interrupted.
For just one minute, I thought that Flow was voluntarily dissolving their monopolistic telecomms regime in the Eastern Caribbean, by helping Digicel poach their disgusted customers with their newly announced bundles. Alas, it was but a brief mental lapse on my part!
The most likely cause of the outage was a wide-scale automated update which failed because of world-class, cutting-edge, operational ineptitude – a feature, not a bug of the predatory business class in the Caribbean!
Where is the fail over plan for such events or outages. Does Flow even have one other than an aplogy and some rebates. How do we know this will not happen again and if it does happen, what is the required down time. A degradation of service is acceptable but an outage for over four hours is not acceptable. We want to hear from Flow about their Fail over plan.
Because of this outage and the constant interruptions during the week i have lost out on 5 days worth of work as i work online. Yes they owned up to the issue but what ever compensation that is given will not cover the money that was lost. Now there is also a risk of me losing my job as one of the key requirements is to have a stable internet connection, which i cannot guarantee, although flow said it was resolved my internet disconnected randomly 4 times withing 2 hours. Additionally it happened last night around midnight while i was in an important meeting. This is unacceptable as the main service provider for the country.