Poor: Veco and Pldt

Well I am not so sure if this is gonna be cool for everyone but I am trying to see if someone's going to like the idea and maybe decide to write about the word: POOR as a WRITING PROMPT. This is also to help other writers who do not have any idea what to write.

When you hear the word POOR what comes to your mind?

Are you like google which gave me this answer?

Whenever the word is mentioned the first thought that comes to mind is that the person got NO MONEY or cannot afford. Right?

I too has the same thoughts but today I realize that there are a lot of words and terms or even happenings that can be paired into this word.

STORY TIME:

Yesterday we received our Electricity bill amounting to 6000 in Philippine money. If you try to convert it in dollars it would be around $120.

Last December we never had electricity due to Typhoon and it got restored last February 31st so most likely almost 2 months of no electricity. It was the worse feeling yes but what is worse between being billed for not being able to use the service or being billed twice than the normal monthly bill?!

Because we pretty much experience the same. Here's what we have:

So we had a balance of 1527.83 pesos last November which I thought will not generate because last November 8 they disconnected our service and I was asked to pay for 1500+ as deposit. At first I thought it is an advance payment so we would need to worry about the next month but to my surprise the agent I spoke earlier told me that the deposit would only be deducted to our bill if we TERMINATE the account. Like what the fuck VECO?! Are you freaking kidding me?! Who the hell would want to terminate an account when electricity is one of our basic needs? And only if you are not MONOPOLIZING the area it would have been better to let a competitor get in! So we do not have a choice but to pay for that balance in November.

Now next thing is that March bill.

Our service got restored last January 31st so most likely that MARCH bill would be the total amount from January 31st going to February. And I would totally be fine to get that specific amount because anyway it is for 2 months.

But BEHOLD come April bill?! Like the April bill is a total of our 2 months bill already and when asked it is because they increased the KILOWATT PER HOUR RATE?! The audacity of increasing it!

I cannot even accept the calculation because we never had any changes of electricity usage since February we even tried to save our electricity and was very keen on using it. We experienced a couple of outages on those months too since the transmitter would always explode due to much usage within our neighbors especially that they missed so much having electricity at home.

They give no proper explanation.

POOR SYSTEM AND POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE!

These type of company system should be reported. Government should do something to them so they won't absurd little consumers who are trying to make a living.

Now if you asked me, why we didn't pay for previous months?

That is because we just got the bill and when contacted them we were only informed that there were no reading.

There were couple of concerns regarding this. It seems like they are trying to get back those months that they lost profits when typhoon hit from little consumers like me.

Here's also another one: PLDT!

Very very bad system and process! I was even blamed for not going to their office which has a very long que?! Like what is the use of outsourcing if we still need to go there and waste freaking of hours when we can conveniently call?!

This not for me but my Aunt's and I am the one processing it since she is in Riyadh and her daughter is the one using the service for her studies especially that virtual class still continues.

Anyway, going back. So we never had service for PLDT too since December 16 and got restored last March 2. We expected that we would only pay less since we only used the service for month of December for like 15-16 days plus we had no pending balance for November bill.

The monthly charge is 1799 but last March we were advised to pay 800 pesos because that is the adjusted fee so we could get the service back.

We paid for it if you see based on screenshot.

But who would have thought that for March til April it would reach to another 6k plus?! Just like how much we are billed with our electricity. The service is unlimited data so no worries with data usage overage but what I am not understanding is when they can verify on their POOR SYSTEM why won't they proactively do adjustment and let the customer pay for the right amount?!

We are only expecting around 3000+ pesos for this. Same scenario when we asked why aren't we getting billed its simply because they have not generated it plus accessing the account online, going to their office or even talking to their customer service are all freaking difficult!!!

My goodness! If only our survey really matters to these kind of companies I would be more than glad to give them 0 from the heart!

...end thoughts...

This serves a warning to all consumers out there. Be sure to ask and if anyone knows where to escalate or report these abusive companies please reach out because I would not mind sending them an email with screenshots.

Note: Lead Image from Unsplash