People have not taken lightly to the news that a "fast track" for customers introduced by utility bills handler ARMS Ltd still means an hour of waiting, with one man describing the company as a "mediaeval operation".
It was the Finance Ministry that had told The Times a fast track introduced two months ago for customers submitting a simple service request saw waiting time drop to one hour.
However, the ministry failed to say how long it would take to be serviced by ARMS Ltd when filing a complaint or seeking clarification about a bill at its Luqa offices, the source of many complaints.
As the company offices re-open today after a two-day shutdown with extended hours to ease queuing time, customers have been left fuming after ARMS Ltd saw a surge of 25 per cent in the number of clients visiting its offices daily since the government posted the energy allowance to households.
"A mediaeval operational model for a 21st century information economy," Peter Vella commented on timesofmalta.com, expressing disbelief that a fast track still meant an hour of waiting.
"Keep the good work up and bring back the dark ages. With special thanks and congratulations to successive governments that are incapable of solving the core issues facing our country," Mr Vella wrote, ridiculing the company, which took over the meter reading and billing functions of Water Services Corporation and Enemalta at the beginning of the year.
"These people should seriously consider visiting planet Earth," another commented while Joseph Falzon said an e-mail complaint he made on July 30 was still without reply 17 days later.
"Fast track my foot! Due to the nature of my work I have to go to the WSC headquarters in Luqa (where the ARMS offices are) every other week and what I do now is take a ticket, return to my office and go back a couple of hours later when I calculate that my number will be called," Ian Galea said, offering some queue-busting advice.
Not everyone can, however, do the waiting elsewhere and Stefan Kottmann-Soler described his two-hour wait that was only shortened after a man got fed up and gave him his ticket.
"I took a ticket with the number 125 at 8.15 a.m. When I entered the waiting room number seven was called. A gentleman who was seated next to me got fed up of waiting and kindly gave me his ticket numbered 59. I waited until 10.10 a.m. for my number to be called. If it took two hours to get from number seven to number 59, how much longer would I have had to wait if I still had ticket number 125?"
The daily average number of customers visiting the Luqa offices shot up from 600 to 750 over the past few weeks after the energy benefit allowance was distributed by the government.
Of these, an average of 250 visited the offices to pay their bills and these were given service "within 30 minutes" the Finance Ministry had said. However, customers "with simple service requests", such as submitting standard forms - who number about 150 daily - could be expected to wait for an hour before being seen to.
On normal days, ARMS Ltd handles about 600 customers daily, served by 15 full-time agents and, according to the ministry, queuing time varies depending on the nature of the complaint.
"Alternative measures are being looked into with the objective of cutting the queuing time for customers. A number of identifiable measures have already been implemented, such as the introduction of multiple service lanes and increasing the number of agents working at front office," the ministry said, insisting the situation should improve in the next few weeks when the numbers of visiting customers decrease.
In the coming months the customer care front office of ARMS is expected to move to a larger, central premise in Gattard House, Blata l-Bajda.
But even this relocation is not without its problems, according to Joe Borg, who commented online about the difficulty in finding a place to park in the area.
"Today there is no way you would find parking next to Gattard House after 8.15 a.m. let alone if ARMS relocates there with an average of 600 daily visitors, not including staff," Mr Borg said.