Continuing with my rant about how SMART Bro
sucks big time… I actually remembered an incident that I overlooked, which was in itself a revelation of the kind of customer service OR should I call it, “disservice” that SMART Bro has.
In late September I had to rush to the US, the trip was rather sudden and so I was unable to have my SMART Bro connection terminated. After things finally settled down over here, I tried emailing and contacting customer support to ask how I could have it terminated. This was in October already and I had no longer been using the service but I felt it was my duty to still pay for the period since I was unable to have this account terminated.
You know what is the first response I received from SMART Bro customer support.. instead of telling me straight out what to do, I was asked “WHY DID I DON’T REQUEST FOR TERMINATION BEFORE LEAVING.”
I don’t know about you but, I find this a rather silly question to ask, that at some point I thought they were scolding me for not terminating it and hence giving them a hassle.
I thought, “this can’t be right, I mean.. I am the customer, I had been paying them for their lousy service for over a year.”
Of course, I knew I had to terminate it, but given my schedules prior to departure I could not do so, and could not find anyone I could trust to do it for me since I have no immediate family in the Philippines, as they are all based in the US.
Now, this attitude reveals what poor customer service SMART Bro has.
So, after that I was advised what to do to terminate the account, and it involved the paying of an outstanding balance of up to October which I paid promptly.
Now, they are telling me that they did not disconnect it because I was unable to meet the requirements (that I had already sent them) for termination, and WANT ME TO PAY FOR AN OUTSTANDING AMOUNT FROM OCTOBER 2008 UNTIL JANUARY 2009.. and will not terminate the account and will continue to bill me (the amount will just get bigger) if I do not settle it.
So as you can see… SMART Bro Customer Service is not only bad, their attitudes are terrible, PLUS their policies are unfair and rob you with your eyes wide open.P2 release
Please take time to read about my SMART Bro problem because this can happen to you.
I had been a SMART Bro subscriber for about 18 months and I have had several disappointments with the service and now another disappointment which is even more serious and more grave.
You see while I had to deal with network problems such as slow or no connection, having to deal with numerous customer service calls because of their network.. I had to put up with all that because it was the only internet service I could get that was wireless, since I was then renting my own place in Sto. Nino Village and did not need a landline.
In the suddenness of my departure for the US, while in the US I had made contact via email with SMART Bro people to inform them that I was in the US and that I would like to have the account terminated since no one was using it, given that I was in the US.
I got a reply and was asked to provide receipt of payment of my SMART Bro balance up to that time which was October, together with a letter of request for voluntary termination, and a copy of my ID. All these I sent, and settled my bill.
Fast forward several months TODAY, when I receive a notice that I had an outstanding bill and that my SMART Bro service was discontinued due to non payment of account balance for October until sometime December. Which then brings be to wonder why in the first place am I still billed when I had already requested for the termination of the account.
So I am again in touch with SMART Bro people who request again for the same requirements but this time ask me to send someone to physically go to a SMART wireless center.
So I send my representative, who then reports to me saying that..
“I will need to pay the accumulated balance of P2,473.33 or they will not terminate the account and they will continue to bill me for the succeeding months even if there was no more service and even if I am not using the service”.
I don’t know about you but this sounds like a threat, or customer blackmail, this would have to be what it feels to be hijacked.
The nerve these customer (dis)service people have, they were remiss in doing their job and now they want me to pay for their mistake.
So in other words, if I do not pay for an amount which was due to their negligence, they will continue to bill me for every month after even if the account has already been discontinued and even if I am not using the service. I mean, seriously… this is not only fair, but appalling and oppressive.
Please forward this post to people you know who are users of SMART Bro so they shall be forewarned. To do so, just use the form right after this post.
Remember, as consumers we are protected by REPUBLIC ACT NO. 7394 otherwise known as the Consumer Act of the Philippines, and I quote..
Art. 2. Declaration of Basic Policy. – It is the policy of the State to protect the interests of the consumer, promote his general welfare and to establish standards of conduct for business and industry. Towards this end, the State shall implement measures to achieve the following objectives:
(a) protection against hazards to health and safety;
(b) protection against deceptive, unfair and unconscionable sales acts and practices;
So what sort of other past complaints have I had with SMART Bro?
Here are three:
http://www.roysencio.com/smart-bro-slow-try-super-slow/
watch ice station zebra online
http://www.roysencio.com/smart-bro-my-ball-breaker-for-the-morning/
http://www.roysencio.com/smart-bro-downtime-a-downer/
Yes this is another angst ridden post about my internet provider, the Slow Smart Bro , which has been very very very slow the past couple of months.
I write this post in an internet cafe where I had to download some files which I could not do at home, thanks to Smart Bro being so slow.
For the past couple of months, my internet speed has ranged from 24 to 46kbps… an hour ago before I left the house in frustration over this Smart Bro Slow fiasco, my connection was at 36kbps. This is what I pay P990 per month for, well… in defiance I have not paid my bill either.
Well, to this Smart Bro Slow Saga, let me point you to some other opinions about Smart Bro below.
3 days pa lang nakakabit ung smartbro ko sa bahay ko pero bwisit na ko. Read More.
I have been experiencing extra ordinarily slow internet connection with Smart bro since yesteray but it is actually worse today I cannot even write a good blog post because it takes years before a page loads. Read More.
I just spent my mornings trying to get in touch with Smart Bro support (672-7277). It’s no joke to call their support because you can be in queue for 30 minutes. Read More.
Some also say that the rebranding was because Smart Wifi now has a bad reputation due to poor services to its subscribers. Read More.
SmartBro – Worst Internet Experience
If you’d perform an online search of Smart Bro reviews, you will see that one of its let-downs is its customer service department. Although I can’t totally say that I find Smart Bro customer service bad, I also can not say that it’s good enough. Read More.
I tried calling the smart support hot line *1888 but I could not connect, it says “Your number cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and dial again.” With that, I decided to go to their office to report the issue, but when I went their, even their support is not available, because they said, they were offline and could not check. Read More gummo movie download
In conclusion, in terms of the best to worst ISP based on stable internet connection and customer service reliablity, here it is:
1. Globe Broadband (best)
2. Smart Bro
3. PLDT MyDSL (Worst)
Read More king of new york online download .
Yes SMART Bro is my ball breaker for the morning and I will tell you why in a bit, but before anything else, my apologies to the thousands (as if) of readers of my blog.. ok there might really be just a couple.. I have not been blogging much recently, as always work and projects take priority.
But this is something I definitely want to write about.
My internet connection has been terrible the past week, very very slow would have to be the appropriate description and then things got even worse when the other night my internet connection would die every hour, and without fail. Yes… my connection would just die and I had to unplug the adapter for the antenna in order to refresh the connection. Smart Bro has a different system see, they install an antenna on your roof that picks up a signal from their cell sites, and the signal goes down the antenna through the line and into your PC.
Anyways, I try and do a bandwidth check on Globequest.com and to my horror I find that I am my bandwidth is clocking in at 20-40 kbps, and I am supposed to be on a 384! I am worse than dial-up, and I am paying good money to these fawckers every month.
Then I called customer support, using a cellular phone which I have already been on for hours the past few days talking to customer service who don’t really “serve” their purpose, and customer help who hardly “help”. So here I am on the cellular phone, the time ticking, money wasting.. and I am not yet speaking to someone, I am subjected to listening to all their ads on the line before they give me the damn local number to press in order to get some help.
Finally I get across to someone, who gets the usual info, my account number, my name and the problem.. and I explain to her the situation and so she says that we go to a certain site, www.speedtest.net, but then 5 minutes pass and that website does not load still… on account of the very very slow bandwidth I suppose (sarcasm with a grin). Then finally, maybe she got tired of waiting to, she says she checked the bay station (whatever that is) and says that it is only giving me 20 kbps of bandwidth.
Ok, now since that information could have been acquired in the first place, I would have appreciated her doing that at the start, to save time, to save money, to save effort on me explaining everything to her.
SMART Bro Customer service should try to improve service and actually serve, and do it faster and not let their customers jump hoops before getting an answer.
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Here are more things bloggers are writing about SMART Bro.
I just spent my mornings trying to get in touch with Smart Bro support (672-7277). It’s no joke to call their support because you can be in queue for 30 minutes. Today, I took the pains to call them to first report a slow connection. The time is 9:00 AM. The lady first picked up the call , made me get the IP address and physical address and our line got cut. Read More.
Slow speed started to occur sometime June 2007. Calling the Smart Support (6727277) is agonizing. It’s best you have a speaker phone when you dial their number.It can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour before you can get to talk to someone. Read More Solo move .
I was planning to continue my subscription to smart wifi/bro for a second year because its cheaper 788@256kbps despite the fact of a very unimpressive service and support that I have experienced. Read More
.
According to the Smart websites,Smart BRO Wireless Broadband Internet is available for Php999 per
month while Globe Worldpass is available for Php250.00 (Vat inc) plus “excess minutes will be charged P0.50/min for dial-up andP2.00/min for Wi-Fi”. Read More.
SMART is not so smart in fixing their problems and their hotline: there is no way I’m going to call that “Customer Service”. Everytime I call the hotline to complain about SMART BRO-ken (yes…it should be called SMART Broken) I always get frustrated and furious on the way they handle customers. Read More.
Eventually, every new technology available like HSDPA can promise broadband access, whether wired or wireless. What the consumer can hope for — short of excellent service — is network coverage. Read More
.
I am currently subscribed with Smart Bro Plan 999 and I am still contented with what I get from this kind of internet connection. My experience with the Smart Bro is very different from what other bloggers are telling about it at their blogs. Some say, “SMART Bro Sucks
“. Other say, “SMART Bro’s dead” and a lot of things they’re saying because of what they said, “bad services of the SMART Bro.” Read More.home of the brave online
Is every Smart Bro subscriber having problems with yet again another Smart Bro Connection
catastrophe or is it just me? Am I being hand picked to sample first hand Smart Bro Downtime ?
I had a major major problem with Smart Bro some months ago and I was aching to just rant about it but, it got overtaken by errands, tasks and life! So I forgot about it eventually, well now I have enough reason and lots of steam to have me huffing and puffing.
But before I talk about my smart bro connection and what happened before, the connection has been so slow, I could not get any work done. Well actually I did get some work done, a task that I could have finished in 30 minutes took me a good four hours because of the lousy connection. The perils of having a business online, when your connection to it is severed, you’re flying blind.
So here is the story, I have had my Smart Bro connection for about almost a year now; yeah that long I am sure that’s what you’re thinking. But for so many months I have been plagued with a couple of problems. One, is an email problem. It first started out as my being unable to send email using Outlook. I could receive mail, sure not a problem, but sometimes I could not send. Then all of a sudden it becomes alright again. Then out of the blue it happens again, and then later on it would be alright again. You see, I would not be able to send out email unless it was alright again, and this happened every frigging day!
Second problem, my connection would die. Simple as that, I was connected but I couldn’t get any service. They’d tell me their servers were up and there were no problems, so then they point a finger at my PC and say I have the problem from my end.
Each time this “can’t email episode” occurs, or when my connection goes dead, I then phone their customer service agents; many of which are totally clueless of the sort of problems we encounter and I will tell you why later. No, wait I will tell you now.
These guys, will help you trouble shoot your problem, BUT, are not experts at it. They are not engineers, experts or at the very least uber tech savvy computer users who diagnose their home PC’s themselves. No! Except for a few good men I have spoken to, most of the Smart Bro customer service people are simply programmed robots that read from a trouble shooting manual. Its damn simple, if option A don’t work, then proceed to B, if that don’t go either, go to C, then D then if nothing helps, they’ll give you either of two chilling conclusions with an equally worrisome recommendation.
One, they’ll tell you your PC has a virus and that was causing the problem.
Yea, they’ll lay that viral crap on you when they can’t think of a solution.
Two, they’ll tell you that your LAN card is busted and it needs changing.
Ha! You love to bust my chops with that line do you?
Third, they’ll tell you that your outlook software is corrupted and you need to reinstall.
Reinstall my footsie!
Fourth, they’d say, my windows is corrupted and that I needed to reinstall!
Reinstall my sweaty fat brown arse.
Now why did I not take their recommendations seriously, in fact, why did I not follow them at all, aside from the fact they were so inconvenient and I would have to install a lot of software, programs and crap that I have on my PC, plus I would have to back up this and that… long story short, too much work, too little time over what I knew as fact is a mis diagnosis of the problem. This was proven later by one more thing, the last reason they gave me, that lead to the solution of my problem. Which I will tell you about in a bit.
But before that, how did I refute their recommendations?
To the virus, I said, my virus protection is up to date and my PC is clean. Without telling them, I consulted my programmer friends who also told me it could not be a virus.
To the LAN card being busted, simple… I took my main PC of the hook, plugged in a different PC using a different LAN card, if indeed that the LAN Card of my main PC was busted then the second PC should get a connection. Outcome? No connection, meaning its not my PC or LAN card, it was their connection.
To Outlook being corrupted, ha.. I just shrugged that off saying, “why in the hell is it then able to send later on?” From what I know about software or hardware, if its corrupted, its corrupted, it don’t work period. Just like saying if your car’s battery broke, its broke, its not going to start later on if you let it rest or something.
To windows being corrupted, well again, if its corrupted then its corrupted, it won’t work. It probably won’t even boot! But it does work, and the problems were simply, me not getting internet even if I am connected and second, sometimes I cannot send out email through outlook. I gets this error message saying the email couldn’t be sent because server was not found.
Finally, the day came when some customer service agent gave me a new diagnosis, my smart bro antenna on my roof was busted and needed replacing.
Hallelujah something new finally, I think to myself ok, maybe having it replaced will fix things. And so they send over repair guys, who are actually contractors and not internal/regular employees of Smart Bro.
The great thing about working and talking with different groups of people, who I assume are contractors providing outsourced services to Smart Bro, they don’t cover up for the other if the other boo boos.
So the repair guys come in, new antenna in hand, check out my PC and voila after a few checks with the settings… say… “there is nothing wrong with the antenna”. Ok, great news, but I say “what’s causing the problem”.
I turns out, it was Smart Bro’s system all along, sometimes the engineers manning the connections and all make some changes, don’t get it right the first time, then tweak tweak and tweak, while we subscribers suffer suffer and suffer.
The customer service people don’t know any better, because they are the other appendage on a body that they aren’t actually connected to, if you know what I am saying.
And so all it took, was Smart Bro’s supplier to come to the house and check on the settings, and say my connection is hooked in to a channel assignment or a connection or something that did not exist. I guess that explains my connection. Upon further investigation, I managed to find out that a lot of subscribers do have the same problems, especially with that email thing.
So now, can you actually then take the word of a smart bro customer service agent who tells you to do this and that, knowing that these guys are far from the mark. Picture this, you reinstalling your PC, losing a lot of files… and the clincher there would be, after reinstalling your PC you find that the problem has not been solved HAHAHA.
For someone one relies on the internet for business, it is such a bummer and maybe you’re thinking why not get another service or have a back up connection? And my snotty retort would be, why? I am paying them good money each month and I expect good service, I am not paying and subscribing to them only to pay more for an added back up provider. Besides the only other options are PLDT which is just as lousy and Globe which is just as flaky.
So in concluding the rant, the Smart Bro downtime is a drag indeed, Smart Bro has to improve its services, its connection and most of all, try to improve the kind of front liners they have, these CSA’s most of whom do a disservice than service, these first levels of contact between the company and a subscriber with a problem that needs solving.
And yes, despite what I have been through, I have NO choice but to stick with them for now; in the absence of better more viable choices. they still get my money, I still get their service, but I do get to have my rant.
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