If only (2)

LET me aver something positive as a consumer … I would like to again applaud Meralco for their professionalism in dealing with their clients, especially senior citizens like me, at least in the Commonwealth Avenue branch.

It is already a big pain to leave the house, face the traffic of Katipunan, on to Commonwealth Avenue, but when you get to park in front of the Meralco Commonwealth branch, you get immediately assisted by the parking attendant or the security guard.

Two years ago, during the bad pandemic times, seniors were segregated from the rest of the crowd, under the protection of tents. The security guard by the door assists you and calls you when the lane for seniors inside the building frees up. I’ve been waiting for all of five minutes when the guard calls me, lets me inside, straight to the teller. I show my bill, gave the payment, and was in my car after 10 minutes, with the parking attendant guiding me to enter the maddening traffic on Commonwealth. My car trip took much, much longer!

Today, as I write this column during a typhoon at 8:50 a.m., the house lights and TV blinked a few times and the power went out. At 8:58, I received a text message from Meralco informing me that power was interrupted, and they are fixing it although the restoration time was still unknown.

At 10:15 a.m. the power came back. At 10:17 a.m. I got a text message that the problem had been resolved. Not even 10 minutes’ lag.

Now, that is efficiency.

Telecoms

The majority of telecoms and ISP providers employ call centers to man their customer hotlines. I am sure that I am not the only client whose blood pressure shoots up every time I call their hotline.

Firstly, they announce that their hotline is 24/7 but, you wish.

Secondly, you feel like you hit the P200 million lotto jackpot if you get to talk to a customer service representative.

Thirdly, when you ask a question, you sense that the representative is only reading from a prepared script like a list of FAQs designed to address most questions. In short, not only is the representative not an employee of the telecom, he/she does not really know what is being discussed, thus the template runaround is given to you until you are ready to blow your top and he/she tells you she will make a report, give you a reference number and endorse it to their superiors.

Like I mentioned in an earlier column, all ISPs pronounce their fast internet service with the safety clause “up to 80 mbps” if you pay for a plan of 80 mbps, or “up to 200 mbps” if you pay for a plan of 200 mbps. After subscribing to their plan and paying for the deposit, the modem and the service, you use your speed test and you are lucky if the results turn out to be 80 percent or better for the signal. Most of the time it is only 30 to 40 percent, especially during the peak hours of usage.

So, why pay for a subscribed speed of 200 mbps when you get only 80 mbps most of the time?

The only way to get efficient internet service is to drop your service provider and subscribe to a new one which will always provide better service as a new player. Until it reaches a certain threshold of subscribers, then their service begins to falter. Such is the trend. So, you pray that a new provider joins the scenario, and so on, and so forth. Such is the ease of their making profits at our expense.

Problem is our legislators find it more important to reschedule barangay and SK elections than to address these consumer concerns.

And that is why I find Elon Musk’s proposal of thousands of small internet satellite links quite appealing.

That will be the day when you pay for 80 mbps and you consistently get 64 to 80 mbps. At the moment, dream on, friends, dream on.