A phone company that can’t be reached
4/2/2005 2:02:00 AM
Source : The Manila Times
Among those who declined was The Manila Times Chief Executive Office Rony Diaz.
Mysteriously and—more accurately—annoyingly, however, he was still billed a P24.35 charge for the period March 1 to 15.
It was not a big amount, but undeniably the lack of efficiency is irritating, in the same way that a pebble in a shoe is very uncomfortable.
After I made some phone calls, leaving my number, Jun Sambalilo of the PLDT’s media affairs called me back two days later to tell me he would refer the concern to Teleservices, the company’s division that responds to all telephone requests such as application for new lines, special landline features, billing concerns, telephone repairs and other service requests/inquiries.
Late that day, Lara Abrasia of Teleservices did call me to apologize for the oversight and promised to cancel the subscription the very next day. She also promised that, although PLDT could not return the money to Mr. Diaz in cash, the charge would be credited to the next billing.
Abrasia could not explain how or why the P24.35 charge had been made—perhaps PLDT’s subscriber base has become so huge and too unwieldy to handle—and very courteously told me told me that if I had any more questions, I could always call the 171 line.
Yes, I did have more questions a few days later and tried calling the 171 line but, and true enough as Mr. Diaz had warned me, it was impossible to get though.
I approached Anthony Alcantara, a friend of mine also working for PLDT’s media affairs office, to ask a few more questions about the Premium 1908 Lovedoc service, but even he admitted that he was not familiar with the service and could not give me details.
The PLDT website (www.- pldt.com.ph) did not list the Lovedoc service.
Frustrating!
I was recently told a story that a subscriber of Smart’s post-paid service who consistently and promptly paid her bill, was immediately cut off because she failed to pay her March bill. This person explained that some home emergency had upset her budget and had to use the money for her Smart bill for another emergency. Not long after that, she could not make any more phone calls or send text messages.
That person has since updated her payments to Smart, but we still want to know Smart’s policy regarding delayed payers. Is there no distinction between the treatment of first-time delayed payers and regularly delinquent payers? Before cutting a payer’s line, doesn’t Smart check a delayed payer’s history before cutting off his or her line?
We’ll see if we can get an answer to this one.