Time and the developing world

mountainannie

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I wonder if there is a measure on how developed a nation is by how quickly you can get things done?

For example.

for getting a taxi, santo domingo would rank WAY higher than NYC where you cannot call for a cab..Here in SD there are at least three companies which will have a cab at my door within three or four minutes.

Banking
for this one the DR has a long way to go.. Only Banco Popular, I think. has internet banking to speak of. The others let you only check your balance, not pay your bills.
It can take 45 supposedly business clear a US check. It can take two hours to make a deposit. The lines at all banks are really long both on the first few days of the month and around the 15th..

bill delivery and paying

I only have three bills a month but it takes me all month to pay them somehow. First is the mystery of finding them since they only arrive on time one month out of three.. and none of them come by post, all by private courier. I have the electric down pat once I realized that they simply cut it off when you do not pay whether you get the bill or not and there is no grace period, no deposit. So I try to even keep a positive balance with the electric company.

Both the phone company and the cable company will wait for two months before any sort of problem so i am not so neurotic about this.

I keep trying to pay them all on one day but this does not seem possible. it should be possible. Just has somehow escaped me.

Then there is shopping.. It takes forever to find anything anywhere. Just because the store had the thing you were looking for, there is no guarantee that they will stock it again. This recently .. when La Sirena suddenly stopped stocking embroidery needles. Still had the thread. No needles.

There are no web pages for shopping with the notable exception of Ikea. Americana has what looks like a web page but you will find six blenders listed and only one stove. Perhaps they figure you are going to the store anyway. Or perhaps there is just not enough internet penetration yet for a web page to make any sense. I expect that most of the older generation is not computer savvy unless their job called for it. And how many would that be? If they have a secretary for Excell and Word Perfect?

Now in my ninth year here, I no longer make lists with more than three things on them. If I can do two out of three, it was a good day.

I guess this sort of thing comes out with a competitive index. I know they have a measure with how long it takes to open a business.

On the other side, the Haitian guy who works for me sometimes can get an amazing number of things done around the house.. plumbing, electricity.. which would take days and cost ten times as much back home.

funny. Guess anything that is labor saving for a customer, like internet shopping or putting on more tellers for the heavy days, is not a priority here.

paz sciencia

what i am here to study and learn
 

cobraboy

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Now in my ninth year here, I no longer make lists with more than three things on them. If I can do two out of three, it was a good day.
Good point.

I find that when a store has something I want/like, especially food, I'll buy a hunch because one never knows if they will have it again.

Think of a country as to where they are on Maslow and you will find your answer...
 

bob saunders

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Annie we pay all our bills except the water bill by either internet banking or telephone. We bank at BHD. The only reason we pay the water bill locally is because it's two blocks from the house and we have multiple accounts to pay. I do e-transfers from Canada and usually have the money in my account in two days. It has taken up to five though.

With you living in Santo Domingo you would that there isn't much you can't find, if you know where to look. We are lucky enough to have my wife's first cousin live in the area beside Chinatown. She has lived in the same apartment for 25 years and between her and her husband (taxi-driver) there is almost nothing they don't know about Santo Domingo.
 
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Mauricio

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I pay all bills either online or all in the same day in the same office without a line (todopago / vimenca / western union in Jumbo Luperon). No extra charge, but you have to pay cash.

The point war bothers me most is the articles that are in stock one day, disappear, come back at once, appear in a completely different category (I already confirmed there is no such thing as category management in retail in DR, not even in Jumbo). Last week I found after months of absence again something I had been looking for several times and had to buy 5 even though I actually only needed 2.
 
I couldn't believe when we first got here that we had to go to the internet/cable place and electricity place to pay the bills with cash only!! Holy 40 years behind or what?!
We got our Cable the first day and Internet the day after we signed up though, no way would it happen that fast in Vancouver!

Scotiabank does have internet banking thank god!! i just signed up today...still waiting for my wire transfer that has taken 6 weeks for us to be even able to do the transfer!

Cell phones you have to have a DR phone #, job etc...to get a friggin plan?! Pretty hard when you just arrive to the DR! Have people not heard of using CC as security??!!!

Many things like building a fence, new septic tank, water well, pool, getting work done around the house do happen a lot quicker than Canada, or were we just lucky???!!!
 

mountainannie

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That is what I see as well .. The physical work gets done quickly. There is a paper work jam. Inventory. Bills. stuff like that. And you can buy a prepaid cell with no plan just off the street... So there is a reverse of sorts. Plumbing and electric work.. easy. Good housecleaners? So easy. You can find people who have three and four servants in the house for different jobs. one just for ironing, for example.
 

Koreano

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I couldn't believe when we first got here that we had to go to the internet/cable place and electricity place to pay the bills with cash only!! Holy 40 years behind or what?!
We got our Cable the first day and Internet the day after we signed up though, no way would it happen that fast in Vancouver!

Scotiabank does have internet banking thank god!! i just signed up today...still waiting for my wire transfer that has taken 6 weeks for us to be even able to do the transfer!

Cell phones you have to have a DR phone #, job etc...to get a friggin plan?! Pretty hard when you just arrive to the DR! Have people not heard of using CC as security??!!!

Many things like building a fence, new septic tank, water well, pool, getting work done around the house do happen a lot quicker than Canada, or were we just lucky???!!!

They came next day? It was month & half before they even showed up and another two weeks to properly set phone cable and internet for us. And the cell phone plan was another three visits to the office to get it activated.

The thing about getting things done here is you consistently have to watch them work, from beginning to end. You just can't let them do their stuff and come back later and assume they did a job as promised or used right parts.

Oh the lines I waited in this island is as bad as the lines I saw on old movie about the former Soviet Union. The lack of customer service or knowledge on their products is agonizingly painful.
 
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mountainannie

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Get Tpago and pay your bills from your cel phone. I get an email from all of the utilities each month, and as soon as it hits my inbox, I get on TPago and pay it.

It doesn't get any simpler than that.


I went to the page but it is gonna have to get simpler than their explantion for me to understand it. Is this tied into my bank account and how? It may be that they have made a generational leap over internet banking here but I do not understand this at all..of course, I do not even really use a cell phone prefer Word 97 to all other programs so I am not a cutting edge tool myself.
 

mountainannie

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JD.. is there somewhere I can go to have this explained to me by a humanoid? I am never going to get it from the web page but it may be the answer to a lot of my issues. How long have you been using it? It does not fill me with confidence that half of their web page categories are empty but they appear to be affiliated with a lot of stores.
 

mountainannie

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I am at progresso now and they do not have any internet banking except to check the balance.

guess i am standing in the line still

the cell phone ap might be an incentive to get another cell phone

i get nagged about not having one but I am out and about so rarely that it seems silly,,, good to know that they are advancing though.. thanks
 

bob saunders

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I am at progresso now and they do not have any internet banking except to check the balance.

guess i am standing in the line still

the cell phone ap might be an incentive to get another cell phone

i get nagged about not having one but I am out and about so rarely that it seems silly,,, good to know that they are advancing though.. thanks

Banco Dominicano Del Progreso| Pagos De Servicios
Really?
 

bob saunders

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i can pay my tricom bill AT the bank..Not internet banking unless I am mistaken. When I pulled up the page the only thing I got was to check my balance.
All the following can be paid online; Do you have a cedula?

Orange Dominicana:
Modalidades: D?bito a cuenta y presentaci?n de factura v?a caja

CAASD:
Modalidad: Factura v?a caja

EDESUR:
Modalidad: Factura v?a caja

Ayuntamiento Distrito Nacional:
Modalidad: Factura v?a caja

Ayuntamiento Santo Domingo Este- AS:
Modalidad: Factura v?a caja

Tricom:
Modalidad: Presentaci?n factura v?a caja

Proseguros, S.A.:
Modalidad: Dep?sito a la cuenta de Proseguros

Motor Cr?dito, S. A., Banco de Ahorro y Cr?dito (Pago de Pr?stamo)
Modalidad: D?bito a cuenta



Seguridad Social e Impuesto sobre la Renta
?
Cliente se dirigir? a una de nuestras sucursales con su n?mero de referencia o el n?mero de RNC de la compa??a.

?
Informar? a un Oficial de Servicio que desea realizar un pago de la Seguridad Social o alg?n pago de Impuesto sobre la Renta.

?
El oficial confirmar? con el cliente los datos suministrados y simplemente proceder? a completar el formulario de lugar y dirigir? al cliente a caja para efectuar el pago, el cual debe ser en efectivo, cheque certificado, cheque de instituci?n o cheque de administraci?n.
 

mountainannie

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no cedula yet

tricom and claro and edeeste

does not VIA CAJA mean that you can pay them at the teller?

that is what I thought.

I do have a place at the pharmacy that I can pay two of them in one place.

I set it up to pay tricom with a check and now cannot pay with the card.. only a check.

or cash.

it is that sort of little glitch///
 

palmiche53

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Dec 17, 2012
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Do not stereotype, 1s.t world countries full of 3rd. world country people and vice versa.
 
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palmiche53

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the solution is : do not move from your 1st world high humanity country. Why do you move the the hellhole 3rd world?
 

bluemoonnyc

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Good point.

I find that when a store has something I want/like, especially food, I'll buy a hunch because one never knows if they will have it again.

Think of a country as to where they are on Maslow and you will find your answer...

LOL, Maslow,,havent heard about that since college
 

LTSteve

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Jul 9, 2010
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In the DR we all perceive that the customer service in some cases is poor. We wait and wait and wait for the guy to hook up the internet or straighten out a problem. Perhaps it is a simple fact that there are not enough qualified people to go around and that is why you wait and wait.

In many cases the customer seems to be taken for granted and there is NO flexibility when it comes to deviating from policy. You can see a simple solution but they will not change policy to suit you.

I remember years ago when my wife, children and I frequented the all inclusive hotels. Their policy was to give out one room key. Period. End of discussion. You would think that you were asking them to build you a new room. No matter what you said there was no way around the question. We can't give you another key without God himself coming down and handing you one.

This attitude was not the fault of the clerk but of the hotel manager. Instead of trying to be customer friendly, they were worried that you were going to give the key to your wife, mistress, concubine or anyone else you might have met at the swim up bar.

That attitude has changed over the years but it all starts at the top. Managers who don't want to deal with foreigners are ignorant to the fact that this is a big part of their business. The sharp ones will adapt and pass that on to their employees.

LTSTeve
 
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Lothario666

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Oct 16, 2012
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I find that when a store has something I want/like, especially food, I'll buy a hunch because one never knows if they will have it again.

They must mark these things in their computer system as a "Gringo" item so they can torment us by not restocking them. Nacional, Bravo and La Sirena all had Dark Chocolate Milky Ways.

Now even though the local La Sirena had these at nearly "EVERY" cashier aisle, all of a sudden, there are none. They must have been raided by the "Dark Chocolate" Police.



"R"