President
and justice
minister tour
new
Registro
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HERE!
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Casa Presidencial
photo
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Traditional
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gets new
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A.M. Costa Rica photo
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BBG continues to rack up the caller
complaints
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By Shahrazad Encinias Vela
of the A.M. Costa Rica
staff
A U. S. telecommunications firm continues to generate complaints from
customers who make international phone calls. Some of the unhappy
customers placed calls from Costa Rica and were charged up to $50 for a
five-second call abroad. The country's main telephone service, the
Instituto Costarricense de Electricity, has signed another 10-year
contract with the firm.
The public telephones are found all over the country, mostly in
hotels and at Juan Santamaría airport. According to the
Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, the former monopoly provider
in the country, there is a rate of 134 colons a minute for
international calls on a pay phone.
The rate is the maximum that can be charged in the country, said a
spokesperson for the Superintendencia de Telecomunicaciones de Costa
Rica. The person added that it is against rules to apply a higher cost.
BBG Global A.G. has found a way to charge more and continues to operate
in the country. Because of the locations, the callers usually are
foreigners, perhaps tourists, and the calls are all placed with credit
cards. The caller usually does not learn of the astronomical charge
until the credit card bill arrives. As A.M. Costa Rica has
reported, hotel operators and others who host the distinctive blue BBG
telephones share in the income. They may not be aware of the excessive
charges.
In the United States there are two court cases against the corporation.
The first suit is by a Marine and his wife who are suing the
corporation because they were charged $44 when the Marine called her
for four seconds from Germany. The soldier was on his way to Iraq and
paid the call with his credit card. Many servicemen use the company's
phones because the airport in Germany is
the last place they are
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before entering a combat zone and the first
place they are when they leave Iraq or Afghanistan.
The second case is against BBG Inc. and BBG Global A.G. Both companies
are the same but with different company names, according to information
provided by the San Diego Better Business Bureau. However, the company
has avoided litigation by saying the firms are separate. There also is
a Costa Rican subsidiary.
The bureau provided a list of names that BBG Inc., also know as BBG
Global A.G., use worldwide. There have been 459 complaints about the
telecommunications corporation in San Diego made to the bureau in the
past 36 months. San Diego is the BBG headquarters.
“Consumer complaints allege that consumers are being charged extremely
high rates for international phone calls and not being properly
informed about the rates prior to making the phone call. Some consumers
state they are charged for calls even though they were never connected
or the call did not go through,” says the San Diego Better Business
Bureau Web site describing the complaints.
Alan Mansfield, a California consumer attorney, is one of the lawyers
in the Marine's case against the telecommunications corporation. In the
past year he has received many complaints, and he shared two complaints
that have been from Costa Rica.
Both persons had made the calls from
hotels in Costa Rica.
One of the callers, a student from Chile, said in his complaint that he
had only made five calls, each about 30 seconds per call, and he is now
stuck with a $250 credit card bill from BBG Global A.G.
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Judicial stats show fewer persons
murdered in 2011
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By Andrew Rulseh Kasper
of the A.M. Costa Rica
staff
Judicial Investigating Organization statistics show what authorities
are calling a positive decrease in homicides on a national level. But
the numbers also demonstrate other areas where police have been
unsuccessful in curtailing incidents of crime, such as assaults and
home invasions, both which increased in 2011.
Jorge Rojas, director of the investigative organization, explained that
in 2011 the number of homicides in Costa Rica decreased by 11 percent
from 2010 and even more so in comparison with 2009. The number of
homicides in 2010 was 520, and in 2011 there were 459 homicides
reported. Rojas said the 2011 figure could still increase by 20
homicides because that many cases are still being analyzed and
investigated. He said more concrete figures will be released in March.
The current statistics place Costa Rica at about 10 homicides per
100,000 persons, a common rate used for comparison on an international
level. Although it is better than in 2010, the rate is still more than
double what it was in the mid 1990s. Rojas said Costa Rica is far from
being Honduras which was recently declared one of the deadliest places
in the world and has a reported rate of 86 homicides per 100,000
inhabitants.
But the figure also puts Costa Rica at double the rate of the United
States and well above other modernized nations such as Japan, which has
less than one homicide per 100,000 persons. Louisiana as a state and
the District of Columbia both have higher homicide rates than Costa
Rica.
When broken down into provinces, Cartago, Heredia and Guanacaste and
Alajuela all have relatively low rates of homicide. And San José
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has dropped steadily in homicides since 2009. Meanwhile Puntarenas and
Limón had the highest homicide rate last year. Limón was
the only
province to have an increase in homicides from 2010 to 2011. The
province had 26 more homicides in 2011 than in 2010 and remains the
province with the most murders.
Moreover, Limón has already began 2012 with a spat of violent
murders
and crime. The Fuerza Pública dispatched hundreds more police
officers
to the region Monday. Rojas said it is one of the most problematic
regions and may be for a long time because many of the criminals are
young.
What officials were not so proud of is the elevated number of robberies
and home invasions that took place in 2011. There were more than 12,500
reported robberies in 2011. A majority took place in San José,
and a
majority were conducted with a firearm. Although the number of home
burglaries declined by 6 percent from 2010 to 2011, approximately 6,500
occurred last year, the number of home invasions increased by 21
percent. About 780 took place last year.
Rojas said that figure is troubling and people should be more careful
about for whom they open the door. He said many of the home invasions
take place in the morning or late afternoon when one of the occupants
is coming from or going to work.
The statistics released Thursday also said that car thefts and
burglaries are declining.
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