corporate greed : telcos with multi billion revenues refuse to refund consumers on overcharging on text

this is the news today – giant telcos Smart and Globe have been overcharging consumers on the text messages they have been sending in the past year to the tune of a total of P1.4B according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI).

philippine consumers have taken to texting as the most often used way to communicate with each other that the philippines has become the texting capital of the world. the PDI article says filipinos send a total of 20M texts a day or 600M texts a month.

the overcharge is a result of the telcos charging consumers P1.00 per text instead of P0.80 as directed by the NTC (National Telecommunications Commission) effective December of last year.

the order to reduce text costs to consumers was a result of a separate directive by the NTC to reduce interconnection charges. interconnection charges were reduced to P0.15 from P0.35 but the telcos did not pass the savings on to consumers.

the whole idea behind the reduction of interconnection charges was to reduce the cost to consumers but telcos instead decided to pocket the savings and fatten their profits.

(read PDI article in full here: Text overcharging bared)

the telc0s in their interviews are saying they will contest the refund in the courts. in other words, they really want to keep the P1.4B for themselves even though these savings were obtained for precisely the reason of reducing charges to consumers.

what will happen to the telcos if they refund consumers? nothing.

for sure, they will not go bankrupt nor will they loose sleep even for a night, not even during siesta if they give the refund. the P1.4B refund is a mere 0.8% of the combined revenues of  Smart and Globe of P166.8B (source: PDI article). the telcos refunding the consumers will hardly affect their bottom line.

while for sure the telcos will not go bankrupt, it will certainly be appreciated by consumers. around 85% of the philippine population belong to the DE socio-eco classes and that means these are the bulk of the customers of globe and smart. in the first place, it is  this high percentage of the poor being their customers which has made texting the most popular service of the telcos. to the poor, even a few peso savings and in this case in texting cost matters a lot.

happier and appreciative consumers will mean increased usage by the consumers. so in the end it will be a no loss and in fact a gain by the telcos. whatever amount they give to consumers for sure will come back to them in increased usage.  except of course when corporate greed strikes.

wawamTECH: steve ballmer announces major strategic shift for microsoft’s business model – software, hardware, integration & the cloud

note: underscoring are mine.

TO OUR SHAREHOLDERS, CUSTOMERS, PARTNERS AND EMPLOYEES:

Last year was a big year — we delivered strong results, launched fantastic new products and services, and positioned Microsoft for an incredible future.

For fiscal year 2012, revenue grew to a record $73.7 billion. We also maintained strong cost discipline resulting in cash flow from operations of $31.6 billion, an increase of 17 percent from the prior year. In addition, we returned $10.7 billion to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends.

We delivered these results while preparing a pipeline of new and updated products that will launch in the year ahead. To best understand what we are about to deliver and what we’re building toward, it’s important to recognize a fundamental shift underway in our business and the areas of technology that we believe will drive the greatest opportunity in the future.

Our Business: Devices and Services

Last year in this letter I said that over time, the full value of our software will be seen and felt in how people use devices and services at work and in their personal lives. This is a significant shift, both in what we do and how we see ourselves — as a devices and services company. It impacts how we run the company, how we develop new experiences, and how we take products to market for both consumers and businesses. The work we have accomplished in the past year and the roadmap in front of us brings this to life.

Devices With End-User Services

We will continue to work with a vast ecosystem of partners to deliver a broad spectrum of Windows PCs, tablets and phones. We do this because our customers want great choices and we believe there is no way one size suits over 1.3 billion Windows users around the world. There will be times when we build specific devices for specific purposes, as we have chosen to do with Xbox and the recently announced Microsoft Surface. In all our work with partners and on our own devices, we will focus relentlessly on delivering delightful, seamless experiences across hardware, software and services. This means as we, with our partners, develop new Windows devices we’ll build in services people want. Further, as we develop and update our consumer services, we’ll do so in ways that take full advantage of hardware advances, that complement one another and that unify all the devices people use daily. So right out of the box, a customer will get a stunning device that is connected to unique communications, productivity and entertainment services from Microsoft as well as access to great services and applications from our partners and developers around the world.

A great example of this shift is Windows 8. Windows 8 will come to market Oct. 26, 2012, with beautiful hardware that will light up with our consumer cloud services. Windows 8 unites the light, thin and fun aspects of a tablet with the power of a PC. It’s beautiful, it’s functional, and it’s perfect for both personal and professional use. Xbox Music, Video, Games and SmartGlass apps make it possible to select a movie from a PC, start playing it on the TV, and finish watching it on a phone. SkyDrive, our cloud storage solution, effortlessly connects content across a user’s devices. Bing’s powerful search technologies in Windows 8 will help customers get more done. Skype has a beautiful new Windows 8 app and connects directly into the new Office.

Office, too, is taking a major leap forward. The new Office was designed from the ground up for Windows 8 and takes full advantage of new mobile form factors with touch and pen capabilities. It unlocks new experiences for reading, note taking, meetings and communications and brings social directly into productivity and collaboration scenarios. The combination of a Windows 8 tablet with OneNote and SkyDrive has truly revolutionized how to take notes, annotate documents and share information. The ultimate experience with the new Office for both consumers and businesses will come when it is paired with a Windows 8 device and delivered as a cloud subscription service with Office 365.

Services for the Enterprise

Fantastic devices and services for end users will drive our enterprise businesses forward given the increasing influence employees have in the technology they use at work — a trend commonly referred to as the Consumerization of IT. It’s one more reason Microsoft is committed to delivering devices and services that people love and businesses need.

Today, businesses face a number of important opportunities and challenges. Enterprise IT departments are tasked with deploying technology that drives the business strategy forward. They decide what solutions will make employees more productive, collaborative and satisfied. They work to unlock business insights from a world of data. At the same time they must manage and secure corporate information that employees access across a growing number of personal and corporate devices.

To address these opportunities, businesses turn to Microsoft. They count on our world-class business applications like Microsoft Dynamics, Office, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, and our business intelligence solutions. They rely on our technology to manage employee corporate identity and to protect their corporate data. And, increasingly, businesses of all sizes are looking to Microsoft to realize the benefits of the cloud.

Helping businesses move to the cloud is one of our largest opportunities. All the online services people use today — both from Microsoft and other companies — run on servers in datacenters around the globe. The volume of Internet services used will continue to grow as people connect to the Internet from more devices for more purposes — fueling incredible opportunity in our server business. Unique to Microsoft, we continue to design and deliver world-class cloud solutions that allow our customers to move to the cloud on their terms. For example, a company can choose to deploy Office or Microsoft Dynamics on premises, as a cloud service or a combination of both. With Windows Server 2012, Windows Azure and System Center infrastructure, businesses can deploy applications in their own datacenter, a partner’s datacenter or in Microsoft’s datacenter with common security, management and administration across all environments, with ultimate flexibility and scale. Our business customers tell us these capabilities are critical to harnessing the power of the cloud so they can reach new levels of efficiency and tap new areas of growth.

wawamTECH: philippine call center agents are the biggest liars in the world

if you have a cell phone service, a dsl service at home or a telephone landline in the philippines, then you have experienced this for sure. it is an experience we all have when something goes wrong with any of these services. and one more thing, it is never a happy experience.

1. “I’ll just put you on hold for 1 to 2 minutes” –  that can be anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes. never once did i wait for just 1 to 2 minutes when i am put on hold.

2. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience” – saying “sorry” is just lip service. if they are truly sorry then they would ask their management to fix things and get things done faster.

3. “I do understand your concern…” – this is a hit and miss thing. you will be lucky if the call center agent dealing with you really know your concern. this is one of those lines the call center agent say just to pacify you or make an attempt to make you feel better.why do they use this line when it really does not work?

4. “I’m sorry, my supervisor is not available now and is attending to another customer.”  – you did follow the procedure by talking to the call center agent, the first line of defense by your service provider. but after some minutes of dealing with the the agent. being patient or checking your anger you give up and ask to speak to the supervisor. the customer asking for the supervisor is something the call center agent does not like. she is supposed to fix your concern and for the customer asking for the supervisor means she has failed in her job to satisfy the customer. the customer asking to speak to the supervisor is a point against the call center agent. that is the reason why every call center agent in the philippines says this lie. it is an attempt to dissuade the customer from doing that.

we have dealt with call centers of US companies, like several banks. online stores and tech companies, we never experience this with them. ask for the supervisor and the supervisor talks to you in a few seconds if not immediately. it is strange that the call center companies that service US companies are able to do this and yet those servicing philippine companies are not while both are manned by filipinos and are based in the philippines.

5. “I will call you back.” – after some excruciating minutes, your problems with the service has been fully understood and recorded. they know admit something is wrong with their service and that the customer needs relief and action. the call center agent says this to make you feel better, to give the impression that they are there to fix things for you, that they want you to be a happy customer.  but they never call back to tell you if the problem has been fixed or not fixed.

often i will ask the call center agent exactly what she/he will do and what will be said when they call back. i ask that several times just to be clear. i also ask them what time will they call back. they will of course not be precise as to what time they will call within the day which is a ridiculous time frame. it’s weird that call center agents think you will actually wait the whole day for their call.

you push and they relent and give a time frame instead – anywhere from within 3 to 6 hours. you push and ask for a shorter time frame. the most you can get is within 2 to 3 hours.

but do they call back? never! again we have not dealt with a call center agent who calls back as promised.

6. “My name is…” – often i find that that names call center agents give of themselves are not their real name and not the name they use when they are on duty. they do this to keep you off track when you call back and complain about the service you get from call center agents.

i know that as i do call back to complain about call center agents who do bad in their handling of customers. i find out they gave you the wrong name as the person i am talking to will usually say they do not have call center agents by that name. worst, i ask the person i am talking to what is the name of the call center agent who entertained my call based on their record and they say a different name.

7. “My ID number is…” –  one of the other things i do is ask for their ID numbers aside from the names of the call center agents i deal with. the ID number is in many ways a better info than their names. but of course you really can’t be sure that is their ID number. they give you this lie for the same reason they lie about their names.

8. “I will do this myslf…” – this is supposed the  ace in the conversation with a call center agent. this is meant to reassure you that something will be done to fix the problem you had called them for. they are saying here that they will not just make a report and wait for someone to fix your problems but they will take action themselves. don’t believe this, it ain’t gonna happen.

this is a really sad affair not only for these telco companies but for the philippine call center industry as a whole. the philippine BPO industry is supposed to tbe the leader in the world and wants to not only maintain that status but grow it even bigger and faster but behavior like this, the lies that say to customers is not going to get them there.

the other despicable thing about this is that this happens a lot with call centers of telcos like Globe and PLDT (DSL). these are communication companies and yet these examples show they are bad communicators. the worst kind of communication are the ones that lie to customers.

i say it again, why is that filipino call centers handling philippine companies behave so differently and so badly compared to filipino call centers handling US companies? aren’t they the same company and son’t they follow the same metrics of performance and philosophy?

why this is happening is the next topic in this blog.

wawamTECH: how bad is globe service? smart launches a national ad campaign to exploit it

competitive advertising  is one of the most effective advertising concept and format. competitive advertising takes many forms, one is calling out the weakness of your competitor to set up your brand as the superior brand to the inferiority of your competitor. it is one of the most effective as consumers will always go for the superior brand.

not only that, users of your competitive brand, the inferior brand will be encouraged to switch to your brand. that is the main reason why smart telco has launched a new advertising campaign.

globe, it’s only other competitor has been experiencing network problems for many months now.

click to read here : wawamTECH: globe handyphone service failing for months now, collapses metro manila wide on the weekend

globe service has been very unreliable with frequent downtime, inconsistent signal strength, fluctuating signal strength from zero to 2 bars, 30 minute to several hours of receiving and sending text and inability of subscribers to make calls. this has been happening to globe for several months now. this happens area to area but the other weekend the globe system apparently failed metro manila wide.

smart very smartly exploited the inferiority of service that globe has been showing by launching an national ad campaign calling out globe’s network failures. the advertising objective is to get globe subscribers to switch to smart and to prevent new subscribers from going to globe.

this move of smart is very unusual from an advertising strategy standpoint. ads like what smart ran are usually aired by new brands just launching into the market, not by a brand that has been in the market for almost as long as globe is. newly introduced brands use this type of advertising to get loyal consumers of competitive brands already in the market to switch to the new entrant.

globe has been having network problems as a result of a mismanagement of their switch over to a new hardware and system from chinese supplier Huawei which was supposed to upgrade their service – faster service and bigger handling capacity. the change over is so bad that it is wrecking havoc to globe service. (read link, above)

smart obviously knew this as you don’t normally run ad campaigns that feature competitive weaknesses that can easily be solved and quickly. doing that will waste advertising money. smart must have known that the network problems of globe will be going on for a long time that they can actually air an ad campaign on it. smart’s competitive ad campaign has bite only if globe continues to have an inferior product.

this cellphone service war can very well be named as – how your own upgrade can kill yourself.

~~~mindscape landmark~~~
carlo p arvisu 

wawamTECH: globe handyphone service failing for months now, collapses metro manila wide on the weekend

if you are a globe handyphone subscriber, you have been experiencing this – you are unable to make or receive calls and text on certain days, with the signal meter on your cellphone fluctuating from zero  to two bars. this has been happening for months now.

you have learned to live with it, on occasions cursing globe as  you get texts on your cellphone from 30 minutes to 3 hours late. calls made are not any better – you get a “the party you are calling cannot be reached” error message or others calling you hearing the same message. if you are able to connect to a party, the line is choppy with sounds garbled and disconnections happen often.

if you have been a globe handyphone subscriber for sometime, you know that calling their hotline to complain is not worth the trouble to do.  it will not result to anything. the wait is very long when you call and if you are able to talk to a customer service agent, all you get is a promise to fix it but nothing much happens.

the next best thing is you send a tweet to @enjoyglobe and/or @talk2globe. after some minutes, one of those accounts will reply and ask you to DM (direct message) your cellphone number, your cellphone brand and your locati0n to them. you tweet back – “i can’t send you a DM because you are not following me”. (lol).

any person who has a twitter account know that you can only send a DM to people who follow you. but that appear to be unknown to the globe customer service person handling the globe twitter account.

you also know it will not amount to anything so you do not reply. after some minutes, the globe twitter account replies to you that it is true there are network problems in your area and that they are doing something to resolve the problem. that is of course a lie as the problem really does not get resolved for a few days.

you are of course relieved when it gets resolved and you are able to receive and send texts and calls again. but that does not last for a long time as the problem re-occurs again.

after happening at least twice, you get tired tweeting about it and you just console yourself in reading on twitter that many other globe subscribers are complaining about the same thing you are complaining about. you are not alone, the globe service failure happens all over metro manila, repeated many times in all areas and to many globe subscribers.  you wonder, is there a rotating schedule on this one?

what is happening to globe?

globe is indeed having service problems and what is causing this service outages is a very noble reason – globe is upgrading their system.

now, that does not make sense to most of us. if they are upgrading their system, why has the service deteriorated? an upgrade means service will be better but in the case of globe, service has become not only bad but really very, very bad in this upgrade effort of theirs.

we know globe is upgrading its service. post paid subscribers have received at least 2 letters from globe together with our bills saying they are upgrading their network. from what i remember, the first letter from globe came from a vice president or division head then the most recent basically the same letter but this time signed by mr. ernest cu, CEO of globe.

both letters said globe is presently doing a massive upgrade of their systems and spending multi million pesos (meant to be impressive) to do so and that it will be completed within the next 6 months or so. aside from those two letters, globe also released a series of small newspaper print ads saying the same thing.

the truth is, and it is something that globe has not said is that the service failures is being caused by their upgrade efforts.

globe has actually contracted chinese telecom company Huawei to do the upgrade. Huawei was supposed to install new hardware into thousands of globe cell sites around the country. this new hardware is meant to make the globe system faster,  handle more load for them and enhance data handling.

Huawei, a chinese company apparently won in a bidding for this upgrade versus other suppliers like those based in japan and europe. not only did  Huawei submit the lowest bid price, it also promised everything to globe, including the moon and the stars. whatever globe asked, Huawei granted.

globe fell in love with the cheap bid and the amazing moon and the stars promises and awarded the project to Huawei. well, globe soon found out that a cheap bid means you get even cheaper hardware and service. Huawei apparently over promised in their bid and globe for some reason believed them hook, line and sinker.

Huawei simply did not move fast enough to install the hardware in the globe cell cites. they did not want to hire the required number of engineers to install them quickly and properly. (of course, as their margins will be depleted.) not only that, the hardware were also not performing well as promised  and in many cases were incompatible with the existing globe hardware already in place in their cell sites.

this whole scenario is causing the whole globe system major hiccups, thus the frequent, wide and rotating outages of the globe service. problems keep popping up everywhere and anywhere. based on the frequent outages, it looks like very little has been resolved, many months after they started.

the whole situation is so bad that globe has threatened if not has already taken legal action against Huawei. Huawei is chinese and apparently communicating with them has been very difficult for globe and that is not just because of the language barrier. it is also cultural and business ethics that is separating and in fact clashing between globe and Huawei.

that is what has been happening in the past months. but what happened over the weekend?

apparently the globe system collapsed metro manila wide over the weekend – people from all over metro manila complained signals fluctuated from zero to 1 bar, often no service. calls could not be made or received. texts were received many hours late or not at all received.

we experienced that ourselves over the weekend. family members and friends were in different parts of metro manila and we could not call each other and texts were not received or grossly delayed. at varying times of the day, these friends and family members were in makati, taguig, pasig, quezon city, mandaluyong and manila and had the same complaint. twitter showed the same thing.

we had tweeted to @talk2globe last september 1 and the above was their reply confirming there were network problems in san juan. note at the bottom, @TheMallOfAsia account also tweeted problems with globe.

today, monday many more netizens in twitter complained about what happened to the globe service over the weekend. as a concession to the complaints, globe released a memo on their website admitting of the problem on the globe service over the weekend and offered a rebate to subscribers in that area. (click here : http://blog.globe.com.ph/2012/09/temporary-disruption-in-south-manila-last-september-1/)

there are a few things about this announcement:

• globe admitted that there was a network service outage over the weekend
• although globe was not completely honest here as the areas were not just limited to those few areas (southern manila) but practically the whole of metro manila. they did confirm via their tweet that to me that the san juan service was out too. plus the experiences of friends and family who were in the areas i had mentioned, including The Mall Of Asia in Pasay City based on their own tweet.
• the offer of a rebate was a nice gesture but we wonder how that will be done and if this was an honest effort  to make amends. that rebate announcement is very difficult to implement plus grossly unfair to all other subscribers not living in those areas but experienced the same outage.
• what will globe do? give rebates to subscribers only to those whose billing address are in those areas?
•  what about subscribers who do not have their  billing address in those areas but were contacting those living there and were unable to? they were also inconvenienced but no rebate?
•  what about those with billing addresses outside of those areas but were in those places and experienced the outages?

the promise of the rebate to make amends, being short in reality and impossible to implement fairly will not do anything to soothe the already battered globe subscribers. on top of that, it is really short of specifics.

if i were globe, to make this right i would offer rebates to all globe subscribers not just to a specific area. fact is there is no way to determine whether subscribers living in a specific area are the only ones affected. relatives of those living in southern manila but are in other parts of metro manila and even the rest of the country have been inconvenienced too. for sure those living in souther manila have relatives and friends living say in davao or baguio for example who were unable to contact them because of the service outage.

if i were globe, i would give 2 free text days or each subscriber receive 200 free texts as a rebate or a gesture of goodwill on their network problems during the weekend. point is it needs to be network wide, all subscribers and it needs to be meaningful.

what caused the weekend metro manila wide outage?   apparently a major hardware literally collapsed during the weekend. this hardware was like a central system that processes all the texts and calls made to and from all of metro manila. it was something like the central hub for metro manila calls and texts.

we do not know why it collapsed. worst, we do not know why globe had no back up system or some redundancy system for failures like these. the globe system seems to be so fragile, ill conceived and poorly designed. it is shocking considering this is ayala owned to whom funds is not a problem and it is a major telecom company in the country.

will what happened during the weekend repeat itself? well, yes. there seem to be no guarantee that it will not. besides what happened in the weekend was on top of that has been happening in the past months on the Huawei upgrade failures. this was just an add on. that means globe subscribers will continue to suffer.