News: The 10th Ring
With all the iPhone hype invading the internet, I was wondering how f*cked up our telecommunications service here in the Philippines is. First off, we always get these intermittent DSL connections, considering they shouldn’t be taking up more than a few days. I had an experience before with Bayantel when we had a storm. It was 1 week when all of our webside tasks were stalled, and we were losing credibility or money just because of that. Another one was last January. We had this major DSL problem with PLDT and they were claiming it was Metro-wide. We didn’t believe them because in Marikina, there’s internet connection. That took more than a week, at least. In addition to these failures for service, I recently had a bundled Bayantel package application (DSL with phone installed) which lasted for more than two weeks. Two freakin’ weeks, and their lame excuse was that they don’t have modems in their warehouses. I mean come on! Didn’t they pre-ordered for more? Do they just order by batches and wait until the last modem is deployed until they ship new modems? Still, I don’t think shipping would take more than two weeks! I should be saying this is hilarious, but this is more insulting than hilarious! We pre-paid 2k for the connection, and what we got within those two and a half weeks were silly alibis and loss of sanity.
And then lately, we had SPAM calls from our phone provider here in PiKicthen. Imagine, you’re short of sleep, and you work in the night and dawn. You would want some good sleep while your boss is also sleeping (during the day). Then suddenly, the phone rings endlessly, like it felt forever until you pick up the handset, talk to the person on the opposite line, and put the handset back to its cradle. And when you’re in the moment of picking the handset up, you’ll hear Tessie Tomas, Mickey Ferriols, or some random girl promoting PLDT products. Like what the hell!?! Our boss doesn’t pay phone and internet bills just to receive this crap! Don’t they get their messages sent to us over Inquirer.net, billboards, or even comfort room stickers? I mean not taking into account our bad sleeping habits, don’t these messed up heads think that by just ringing our phone wastes our time talking with colleagues or customers, sanity for hearing the annoying phone ring, and concentration over work? This is way more than insulting!
PLDT is the worst company ever built here in the Philippines when it comes to giving service to their customers. Their long lines for simply paying bills is a classic. The way their agents / cashiers / customer relations people talk with their customers felt like insulting (think they are smarter than us and we are wasting their time). Customer complaint response takes eons before getting satisfaction. “Satisfaction guaranteed!” was never in their mottoes. Don’t we pay them not only for the lines but for the good approach we all expect from them? What good can a business do if they do no good to their customers? Worse than that, what good can a company / monopoly do if they do harm to customers?
It’s like paying the bully just to prevent them from hitting you.
