When Filipino tech consumer complaints fall on deaf ears

This story was taken from www.inq7.net

When Filipino tech consumer complaints fall on deaf ears
First posted 07:39pm (Mla time) Mar 13, 2006
By Erwin Lemuel Oliva
INQ7.net

(UPDATE) MARK Gerald Santos, resident in San Pedro Laguna, has not been happy at all with his fixed wireless broadband service.

Promised Internet connection speeds of up to 256 kilobits per second, Santos subscribed to the "Smart wi-fi" service, which is actually a misnomer since this is not a "wi-fi" or wireless fidelity service that allows people to connect to the Internet wirelessly in a coffee shop or a public wireless hotspot.

Rather, Smart wi-fi works with an aerial outdoor antenna installed in your home (usually located on the roof) that establishes a direct "line-of-sight" to the nearest Smart cellular site offering the "strongest possible radio frequency transmission," according to Smart's website. This establishes the "last mile" wireless connection to the Internet.

Santos said he initially enjoyed the service but problems began a few weeks after he subscribed in October 2005.

"For the first few weeks, I didn't encounter any problem with their service but after that I have been encountering numerous disconnections. It happens almost 10 times per hour and the promised bandwidth of 256 kbps has gone down to 50 to 60 kbps. I've been reporting this problem to their technical support but I keep getting the same response every time I call.

They deliver the same spiel. The two most common reasons they give me is, "You have technical issues in your base station"; second, "Your antenna is not in the line of sight," Santos said in an e-mail on January 20, 2006.

Santos immediately called Smart wi-fi's sales department and requested that the service be discontinued. He was, however, told that under an agreement he signed, he was locked-in to the service for one year and he has to pay the remaining months if he decides to stop the service.

"I called their sales department and told them that I had enough of their service and would like to discontinue the use of their service since I'm not actually getting what I paid for. I continuously pay 988 a month (on time) and yet I don't get any Internet connection. They want me to pay 988 pesos times the number of months left in my locked-in period of one year. I think it is very unfair for me to pay them since I'm not satisfied with the service at all. I would like to terminate my account with their company since I am not getting the service I deserve I feel like this is a scam. This is a rip off," Santos said.

On February 13, 2006, Santos said that his service provider replaced his old fixed wireless broadband antennae with a new one, and the service seemed to have improved. But he soon found out that he was mistaken. So he decided to stop using the service, but he now owes the local service provider close to 5,300 pesos for a service that did not deliver the kind of Internet connection he was promised.

Santos is not alone in his plight.

Another Laguna resident, Eriberto Gasmen Jr., echoed the sentiments of an unsatisfied subscriber. He subscribed to the service in September and was using the service without hitches. In November, however, problems with the service started, he said.

Another subscriber, Razel Saranillo, said that she had no Internet connection for a month after subscribing to the service in October 2005. "Madalas walang Internet (We often don't have Internet connection).

I have no choice but to subscribe because the DSL (wireline broadband Internet) services is not available to us. I've written the customer care of Smart and they have yet to give my rebate for nao Internet connection for a month," she added.

This writer has received more e-mail messages, all coming from unsatisfied subscribers of Smart wi-fi service.

Local bloggers were also quick to expose this recent problem, creating long threads of discussions. Pinoytechblog, a group blog of the local high-tech scene in the Philippines, was among the local blogs that generated extensive discussion on the service. One post indicated that users have "mixed reception" about the service.

About the same month Smart wi-fi subscribers started reporting their problems, the Lopez-owned Bayan Telecommunications (Bayantel) experienced problems with its digital subscriber line (DSL) and dial-up Internet services, leading to a major outage in Quezon City.

Marlon Arada, Bayantel head of corporate development and interim head of corporate communications, at that time said that Bayantel's DSL and dial-up services went down because of a problem related to an equipment failure.

"It is the same equipment, the ECN in Diliman, that caused the problem," Arada said in January. The Bayantel executive blamed the company's equipment supplier, adding that every downtime costs the company.

"We have service level agreement with customers, which provides rebates to big customers," Arada said, adding that the company's network was in good shape. "We're confident about our network. We won't be launching our marketing on our DSL services if we cannot back [it] up with a good network," he said.

He added that Bayantel is looking at investing "millions of dollars" to provide a backup network for its DSL and dial-up services to prevent future downtimes and loss of business.

This was not the first time Bayantel has been plagued by such technical problems, as customers of its DSL service have repeatedly been complaining, according to the customer service center of Bayantel.

Smart and Bayantel's customer service centers were often unreachable at the time consumer problems mounted. The customer service hotline of Bayantel remained busy and could not be reached due to the volume of calls they received from customers complaining about the downtime in January. Smart wi-fi subscribers had problems calling up the company's customer support services. If they did, they are often given the same spiel, or worse, nothing that could ease their pain.

'Birth pains'

Smart Communications public affairs head, Ramon Isberto, acknowledged that the operator's new fixed wireless broadband service launched last year was having problems because it was part of the service's "birth pains."

"The challenge for us right now is that we have to deal with another level of complexity of this new service. However, as we do this, we also like to address the different cases individually. And we intend to make this process [birth pains] as short as possible," Isberto said.

The Smart spokesperson also said that the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. Group has created a new position, a consumer affairs director who will now deal with all consumer issues and problems related to the services of all the telephone company's subsidiaries, including Smart.

"We do need to raise the quality of customer service," Isberto admitted, noting that Smart is now working on enhancing the technical capabilities of its technical support personnel.

It is also planning to outsource some of its customer care operations, the Smart executive added.

Menardo Jimenez, head for wireless consumer division of Smart Communications, said that the "quality of service" issues marring Smart wi-fi and other "newer" services of the PLDT group has more to do with the unpredictable boom of demand for broadband services in the Philippines.

"A lot of the QOS (quality of service) issues you're seeing is related to the explosion of the demand. As much as we want to predict the demand for broadband –we predicted this much capacity but after we launched it, boom. The failure lies in not being able to predict the success of a product. We really don't want to short-change the customers," Jimenez added.

Before PLDT decided to name a high-level executive to handle consumer affairs, Jimenez said that PLDT had to backtrack on some low-cost call promos and broadband Internet services where the demand just exceeded their expectations.

"Conventionally, you would think that to double the subscribers, you need to double capacity. If you would look at that data two years ago, it was a logical conclusion. But that is not were seeing today. In the last six months, if we double the subscribers, we have to increase capacity four times. We now see that from actual experience. We now make the corresponding adjustments," the Smart executive said.

Jimenez said that the Smart wi-fi is an example of new technologies, products and services going through birth pains.

Bottom of the food chain

William Torres, president of the Philippine Internet Service Organization and a veteran in the Philippine information technology industry, noted that consumers inherently occupy the bottom of the food chain, in terms of the quality of service they receive from service providers.

Compared to more premium subscribers, such as enterprises and large companies, consumers should not expect the same quality of service given to the bigger companies.

Some of the subscriber complaints on the Smart wi-fi service have reached the Department of Trade and Industry's Bureau of Trade Regulations and Consumer Protection, according to Dita Maralit, director for special concerns of the DTI.

However, staff at the Bureau of Trade Regulations and Consumer Protection said that consumer concerns related to "Internet services" do not fall under their jurisdiction.

"We have endorsed this with the NTC," one staff told INQ7.net. "We usually deal with defective products. In case of services, such as those from Internet companies and telephone companies, it will be better to coordinate with the National Telecommunications Commission—they have jurisdiction over Internet services," the government staff said.

Dialogue
NTC Deputy Commissioner Jorge Sarmiento informed INQ7.net that it held a dialogue between the consumers, telecommunications companies, and other parties concerned at the agency Friday last week.

The Bureau of Trade Regulations and Consumer Protection had been receiving complaints from the same persons over the past few weeks since December, the government staff added.

Anthony Ian Cruz, spokesperson of the Philippine consumer group TXTPower, acknowledged that there is no built-in consumer protection in a deregulated industry, such as telecommunications.

While the group is already moving to help consumers air their problems to the proper agencies through an online consumer complaint service, Cruz said that the telephone companies and other service providers have can sell substandard service because they control the industry.

"I am a subscriber of Smart wi-fi and the service stinks. If there is a problem, I have to call a number. Nobody knows how to solve my problems and most of the call center agents don't know how to help me. We intend to put up an online complaint center in order to gather the complaints and refer them to proper agencies," Cruz said.

Cruz said that the Philippine government has a "hands-off" policy when it comes to dealing with consumer issues in a deregulated environment.

"There is no built-in consumer protection in such an environment," he said.

Sadly, there is also a weak consumer rights movement in the Philippines. Cruz said that the last time consumer groups came together to push their rights was during the emergence of plans to meter phone calls.

In the meantime, consumers like Mark Gerald Santos have to accept their painful fate of having to pay for services that have failed to deliver on their promises.