Maritime Professional - John C.W. Bennett

UnRep Unraveled
by Joseph Keefe

John C.W. Bennett

Principle Nature of Business

Education / Research / Training

Professional Interests

Maritime Regulations and standards

Offshore Drilling

Offshore Oil / Gas Exploration

Offshore Structures

Port Authority

Security Services & Systems

Vessels

My announcements

There are currently no announcements.

Comments on me

Art Pollock

Good afternoon Mr. Bennett, I guess you can call me the instigator on this TWIC issue concerning replacement cost or full cost. I'm the FSO who had this issue come up and I did call the TWIC help desk and found it to be true. What made it even worse was how it was handled at their level and how I really didn't get anywhere when I talked to them. After a week or two I called back to the help desk and this time the help desk operator decided our conversation needed to end and she hung up. That's when things got a little better (or worse) because of the rude TWIC help desk. I turned to other assistance and found help in D.C. As it turns out a Coast Guard Petty Officer in D.C. was able to dig deep enough to send me the policy "Note" change and an administrator in D.C. for TWIC program was good enough to dig and find out how the TWIC offices (USA wide) can get away with having a desktop guide directing their folks to charge full price yet the policy never mentioned it. Well sometime after discovering this policy shift I had my site lead in a class that Laurie was facilitating and he let her know about this issue and since then I have to commend both you and Laurie on getting the word out.
What is missing from this whole process is how it was communicated to us, the users of the TWIC and how many other people it may have affected like the employee here in New Orleans that wasn't on the job because there was a change in processing that none of us (FSO's) knew about. All because it was a desktop guide the unfortunate employees were directed to use. These are the workers trying the work the counters at the sites and they probably took the blunt of any criticism from customers who thought they would only pay the stated price of $60.
The other part of this story is how I had a trouble ticket generated by the help desk back on 1/18/2012 and still no resolution from the ticket I had them generate. Tells me the process isn’t broken. I hope the new company has better customer service than what I’ve seen during this issue.

4/30/2012 3:27:54 PM

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