By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
(I sent this letter to the editor to several newspapers with print screens of the messages of the official Globe Facebook and email accounts stating different minimum speeds. Business Mirror published it on May 3, 2017 but even with the exposure, I doubt if Globe will break its silence on the issue. That’s how thick-skinned these telcos are.)
On January 6, 2017, I wrote Globe President and Chief Executive Officer Ernest Cu asking the minimum speed for my Plan 1299 which advertised maximum speed is 10 Mbps. I was forced to write him because the different Globe sources are in disagreement on the matter. The Globe Telecom official Facebook account said I should have at least 60 percent of the advertised speed. Their official email feedback address talk@globe.com.ph wrote I am supposed to get no lower than 8 Mbps. Globe Telecom Tuguegarao City employee Jayson Arugay shocked me when on tape he declared that per company policy, the obligation of the Globe Telecom to holders of Plan 1299 in Tabuk City is already considered met with a minimum speed of 200 Kbps.
My inquiry started around the middle of November 2016 two weeks after installation because the speed had gone down to 2 Mbps from 9 AM to 9 PM going to as low as 130 Kbps during peak hours which is way below the 7 Mbps the installing team told me would be the minimum acceptable speed of my plan.
With Cu not answering my letter until March 3 when I was in Manila, I visited their headquarters in Global City. Customer Service Representative Carol Rivera tentatively said that it’s the email feedback address that is the authority meaning I should have 8 Mbps but then she could not really state it categorically and ended up connecting me with someone on their hotline she would later identify as Anne. Anne said among others that the minimum speed of Plan 1299 is 8 Mbps and that there must be congestion in Tabuk City if my connection does not reach that speed.
Aware that my visit there would be for naught if I could not get an official answer to my query in black and white, I asked Rivera to receive a copy of my email to Cu. She tried to hedge saying that they do not receive letters when they are not the office to actually act on the communication but would finally agree to receive it.
With the reception of the duplicate copy of the letter by someone right in the headquarters of the telco, I thought they would no longer have any choice but to answer me in black and white but up until this writing (May 2, 2017), no letter yet from Globe.
The communication I got from Globe on March 10, 2017 was a delayed reply from their official Globe email feedback address that my minimum speed is supposed to be 60-80 percent of the advertised speed. The problem with that is the same email address had informed me on January 9, 2017 that the plan has a minimum speed of “at least 80 percent.”
How could we get proper service from a company which does not even bother to answer letters officially and which answers to queries differ from one personnel to the other?
I strongly suspect that the reason Globe is not giving an official statement on their minimum speed is that there would be hell to pay if clients will demand that the company deliver such speeds to them. Based on my speed tests today, the average speed of my line from 9 AM to midnight was around 3 Mpbs which is pretty decent when one talks of Internet speed in this country but then if I am entitled to 60 percent of my plan’s advertised 10 Mbps maximum speed, they will have to give me 3 Mbps more. What if all their clients in Tabuk City demand for the delivery of their minimum speeds? **
