tirsdag den 20. marts 2012

A few things you should know about Globe Telecom!

As a foreigner in the Philippines its not always easy to figure out things here, though most of the business people speak english to you, they will speak Filipino among themselves - even if you are standing right in front of them. But then again its up to you to learn Filipino:)

This blog is about tech related troubles or something that I think you might want to know:)

In this case: My personal experience with Globe Telecom. They are the ones to provide the pre-paid Globe Tattoo Unlimited 3G internet service.

Unlimited is not really the right word to use. If you sign up for Supersurf50 then you download is limited with 800Mb per day, the same goes for Supersurf220, but here its 1GB per day. That's not unlimited!

Furthermore, should you reach these limits, then Globe will cut off your internet connection and resume it next day.

What you should know, is that next day starts at 12.01am, this means that eventhough your not using the internet, it is running!

And to add to this, you are not going to get the remaining hours from the cut off time to the re-connect time. The connection wil be cut off at excactly the same time you connected the day before.

For example:  If you connect at 1pm tuesday and get cut off at 10pm(due to limitation), then you will be reconnected next day(wednesday) at 12.01am and finally disconnected at 1pm.

Now for Globe that means 1 day of internet - But I'm asking where the 2 hours went? They were not added to the total internet time, and as far as I know 1 day is the same as 24 hours - not 22 hours! This is a probleme that Globe should fix immediately!



The above happened this morning (marts 24). Can someone explain me where my missing 5 hours and 14 minutes went(not counting the seconds)? Because its clear that I paid for 1 day (24 hours), but didn't get it! I got from marts 23 at 00:14:12am to marts 24 at 00:16:14am and then Globe disconnected me.

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Another thing. Be aware of how much money is on your account or you might get a nasty surprise!

I will give you an example: If I load 100p to my Tattoo account, and then sign up for Supersurf50, then the next day when my connection ends, I might find my account empty - actually it has happened many times.

Globe says that in order to maintain my connection I need to leave 5p on the account, they do not say that they are going to collect the 5p or more - they are only allowed to collect the 50p.

Instead of fixing the probleme so that the net will be cut off and only 50p will be collected from your account, they will send you a txt to your Tattoo number saying that the service has now expired and that you will now be charged 5p per 15 min..
Unfortunately the 5p per 15 min. seems to be post-paid, so even though you don't use the 15 min., you are charged the full amount. Thats another probleme that I hope they will fix.

As it is now, it's up to you to disconnect to prevent that from happening.

The biggest probleme about this is just that its not always working, meaning you don't get any txt at all!

And if your not aware of what time you connected and what time you will be disconnected then you might find that your account is empty, and have no clue why.

If you then call Globe to complain, then they will justify it with the advisory - the one you didn't get!

Now, add this to the example above with the missing 2 hours. Meaning that Globe actually starts to charge your account 5p, 2 hours(in the example above) before they actually were allowed to charge you 5p per 15 min.!

In the example above it's 2 hours, but it might be less or more for that matter, depending of the cut off time!

I have tried many times to make Globe's customer service aware of these problems by calling the hotline and later emailing them, and I got numerous case numbers and emails to prove it!

So my advise is this: only load 55p to your Tattoo account. That way you only loose 5p, if you don't disconnect at the time you get the txt from Globe.



Below you will find an example of what I'm talking about, look at the highlighted red and blue area. Also se the entry from today, marts 22, I woke up to my account being empty - without any advisory from Globe.


UPDATE:

After numerous e-mails to Globe customer service I got this reply:

Supersurf promo has a maximum volume capacity of 800MB per account per day. If your usage reaches this volume capacity, you will be unable to browse temporarily until the end of the day but the service will be restored the following day. But once your subscription expires, the remaining hours will not be credited back to your account.


Thank you very much for your kind understanding.

In short, you will not get your unused hours from previous day! Thank you Globe!

With kind regards

JBJ

More to come later:)