Email your complaints to President Duterte

HAVE public stockholders become desperate that some of them email newspaper columnists to air their grievances?

This is the question I ask myself when I receive complaints via email from readers of TheManilaTimes.

“Could you help me where I could file a complaint against SMDC?” wrote one reader. The four-letter acronym stands for SM Development Corp.

“Below is my story,” he went on, narrating how he happened to invest in an SMDC condo unit.

“It was January last year when a friend came up to me and convinced me to deposit P20,000 for a unit in SMDC Spring Residences, with promises he would help me with bank tenant] to rent the condo unit and my family are all working and

“Aside from that, out of 30 months of payments, the person guaranteed that I would pay the deposit for only 27 months and that he would be the one to pay three months.

“After faithfully paying in advance the monthly dues until October 2017, I waited for their promises. Instead, I received a bulk of package from SMDC with the card and other documents for me to sign and return to them.

‘Never give up’

“Since September, I have been sending emails to the SMDC Call Center asking for full refund not because I want to but because of misrepresentation. I claim misrepresentation because SMDC wrote three names on the contract with me. I have no idea about the third person. “After searching the internet, I found out about HLURB and emailed it for help. I sent a representative to a meeting that took place on Jan. 8, 2018. SMDC’s representative said they would not refund because it’s not under the Maceda Law.”

What followed were two paragraphs expressing disappointment over SMDC’s refusal to refund his initial payment of P20,000, which, to a salaried worker, would be too big to lose.

As for the Sy family, who owns the SM group of companies which has made them the richest people in this country, P20,000 may not mean much. Nevertheless, it is an amount that SMDC could add to its revenues under “other income.”

In my response, I wrote: I don’t know how I can help you. SMDC seldom listens to reason. Even my family had complained re a company’s condo project and nothing happened.”

Nothing happened to what? Of course, to our complaint.

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A reader of The Manila Times