Now that the tourist season has started, some merchants have been complaining once again that heavy telephone traffic is causing delays in credit card purchases, but several said Friday that things are improving a bit.
In fact, Katrina Commissiong, spokeswoman for the Virgin Islands Telephone Corp., said the company has increased its long distance capacity by about 20 percent, taking the strain off retailers.
Vitelco expanded service in 1999 with the installation of two new switches, one for St. Thomas and one for St. Croix. More immediately, over the past month, it has put in additional 800-lines. Also, she said, Puerto Rico, through which most V.I.-mainland calls are routed, recently expanded service.
The Virgin Islands logs an average of 1 million long distance calls a day, Commissiong said. Of that number, 200,000 are on 800-lines. Those numbers are down a bit in the summer and up in December and January, the peak of long distance traffic.
Jams occur in large part because stores are using toll-free 800 numbers to the mainland to verify credit cards for purchases by tourists.
Ricky Ranani, manager at H. Stern Jewellers in Havensight Mall, said "sometimes it takes about 10 to 15 minutes" to complete a call.
It can be bad "especially around 2 o'clock to 5 o'clock when everyone's trying to shop and get back to the ship," said Janelle Zachman, owner of Going Seanile. "One day we actually lost a sale because we were waiting so long." The customer simply gave up and left the shop.
"It's very annoying. Customers get very insecure" wondering if the purchase will be approved, said Gesine Locker of Erno Laszlo Institute.
Jack Swindell, manager of information systems for Cardow Jewelers, said the store has been experiencing delays "but the (stateside) company we work with has been working with Vitelco," discussing how to reroute calls to less busy lines.
In the last two weeks, he said, things have improved.
Zachman and Ranani also said service has been "a little better" in the last few days, and Locker said it is not as bad as it was last year. However, several St. Thomas residents reported long delays this week in getting their credit card purchases approved at local stores such as Cost-U-Less. Some finally wrote checks rather than wait.
Thursday "was a major test," Commissiong said. With seven cruise ships in port on St. Thomas "there was no problem."
She said, "we believe we're going to be fine for the season."
