Globe Telecom charges subs with “data usage” though unused by subs

in the past two months, my globe mobile has been charged with “data charges”,  P80.00 for one month and the other P90.00.

we had called Globe’s customer service hotline to have the charges reversed. we argued that the owner of the mobile phone is my son, a high school student and spends most of his time in school. he wakes up at 5 am and is in school by 630 am and stay in school until 4 to 5 pm on most school days, he reaches home from 5 pm to 6 pm. use of the cellphone is not allowed in school. not only that, in this particular school, Globe signal is often very weak for calls and text and getting an internet signal from globe is almost impossible. given the prohibition in use of the cellphone and weak Globe signal, data usage in school is an impossibility.

when the student reaches home, we have wi-fi that runs 24/7. at home he has his laptop, an iPad and an iPod Touch that he uses to connect to the internet via wi-fi. it does not make sense that he will use his mobile phone to connect to the internet at home when he has a laptop or an iPad to use. definitely using the laptop or iPad to connect to the internet is much better than his mobile phone.

in net – use of his mobile phone to connect to the internet has no possibility at all in the two places he is often in – his school and his home.

we gave this explanation to the Globe customer service personnel (ID #351759) and he gladly reversed the charges. and just to make sure the same problem does not happen again, we had asked that data connection be disabled on the mobile phone. we did not want to keep calling Globe for the same problem in the future. he told me that data connection was disabled with reference #48438xxxx.

fast forward to the latest month’s bill and what do we find – a new data charge of P85.00!!!

this was shocking! just the previous billing month, we had called Globe to complain and had the data service disabled. we had to once again call Globe customer service (ID#ZTM9xxx) to complain and have the charges reversed! it was precisely the aversion of having to call Globe to have charges reversed that we had the data service disabled and yet here we were needing to do it again. we asked the customer service personnel how that happened and she could not give any explanation.

i have a cousin who had complained about the same data charges on her Globe mobile service. i posted a tweet about it and some told me they had the same problem with Globe.

it has made me think – how many subscribers have Globe charged with unused data charges and got away with it?

let’s do the math – a P90.00 charge per customer for just 1 million subscribers will give Globe an additional P90M in revenues that will go straight to profit! these are “errors’ in billing, no expense for Globe as the subscribers have never used Globe’s data services.  

there are so many things wrong about this. it is plain and simple dishonesty on the part of Globe and victimizing their own subscribers. how many Globe subscribers have ignored these unauthorized charges  in their bills allowing Globe to get away with it? what if Globe made this “billing error” to 2 million subscribers? Globe would be earning at least P180M, a windfall!

there ought to be a law to punish companies like Globe for things like this.