IS SMART A FRAUD COMPANY?

IS SMART A FRAUD COMPANY?
by Lars Agerstig, 2018-02-28.

Listen to the chronicle by clicking on the play button.

In my opinion, yes, it is a fraud company!

The 14th of November 2017, I started to experience a lot of Internet connection problems from my Pocket Wifi to my laptop. It was suddenly disconnecting very often during an hour. Before that day, it was working rather well.
Of course, I made a call to SMART’s Hotline.
They are trained to say, – Sorry for your inconvenience Sir! Polite, but not true!
They are not sorry at all, I am!
I’m paying for the shit and they get their salary from my payment!
In Hotline they told me, to do some basic troubleshooting. Nothing was wrong there! The staff in the Hotline made a report and told me to monitor my laptop’s Internet connection for 48 hours.
Nothing became better, so I called their Hotline again.

Now they made a new report to their “technical team” and I was once again instructed to wait 48 hours.
Nothing became better, so I called them again.

Lies and idiotic arguments
Now they started with some more or less idiotic arguments, that my house suddenly was too far away from their base station.
I told the complete idiots, that my house never jumps around! It is standing still at the same location every day and I’m sitting in the same room with the same Pocket Wifi and with the same laptop too.
The distance to their base station should be the same this week as last week, if not their base station is jumping around?
I also tried to connect with another laptop with the same result.

Next time I called the Hotline, the staff told me that it might be something wrong with my Pocket Wifi or SIM card.
I bought a new Pocket Wifi with a new SIM card. Same problem!
I called the Hotline again!

Now their incompetent staff started to play with mumbo-jumbo words and told me, that they now made some “special report” and “escalated” the problem to a “higher technical team”.
I told them I wanted to talk to that higher team.

Back to square number one
After a couple of weeks with the same Internet connection problems, the technical team actually called me after many demands from me.
Now that complete idiot in the team, started all over again with troubleshooting, errors in my Pocket Wifi and SIM card and that my house obviously was jumping around again!
Back to square number one, with other words!
I told him that I would appreciate, if he could use his brain for a while.
Now he made a new report and escalated it again!
Probably all the escalations during this long time are up to God by now?
We are talking about, between fifty to hundred escalations!
No positive result so far!

In every phone call to SMART’s Hotline, I told them that I wanted a reversal of my load money!
Why should I pay for a service that doesn’t work?
Every time, they told me that they included that in the report, but nothing happened! Instead the Internet connection was getting worse and no reversal of my money was coming in to my account!
I was calling their Hotline now about 1 – 4 times a week and demanded to have my call transferred to a higher officer, maybe with both muscles and brain!

Wow! Finally an intelligent and nice man
After many weeks of talking to about 15 supervisors that obviously didn’t have neither one of those qualities above, I was at last able to talk to a nice intelligent manager, Mr. Walter.
Mr. Walter seemed to understand the problem and promised to take care of this Internet problem and also make sure that the billing group there, made a reversal of my money!
Finally after months of talking to braindead people who did absolutely nothing to solve the problems, I now was able to talk to the right man!
At least I thought so!

In SMART you buy different promos, to suit your needs of Internet connections.
I use “Giga Surf 50”. That means I will get 1 Gigabyte of Internet connection usable within three days, for 50 pesos.
1 Gigabyte is normally enough if you don’t download, upload or if you are not watching movie clips. For me it is perfect, because I almost never do that.

When the Internet connection disconnects all the time (every minute), I must re-start the Pocket Wifi, refresh the website I’m in, or do both, to be able to continue surfing. That consumes a lot of Megabytes every time, which means it will eat up my Gigabyte very fast. Therefore, I need to load a new Giga Surf 50 again, if I like to continue surfing that day!
I have spent lot more than 100 pesos in average, every single day since 14^th of November! That means more than 3.000 pesos per month, or more than 10.000 since that day!

After more than two months and finally some good conversations with
Mr. Walter, I got 500 pesos in reversal to my account.
Hmm… Two months, cost me obviously a lot more than 6.000 peso and now I got 500 back? What the f**k is that?
I called Mr. Walter again.
Mr. Walter’s argument, was that I had been able to use Internet sometimes during the day, so therefore they didn’t pay out more than 500 pesos.

From being nice to becoming a scumbag
Well, that argument from Mr. Walter is not intelligent, if I will put it in a nice way!
It’s like saying, that if you buy milk in the shop and the milk is bad and sour when you get home, they would say to you as a customer, that you already consumed a mouthful of that bad milk to find out that it is bad, so therefore they will just pay you back 10 %!
You see, I don’t buy that Internet promo to be able to surf maybe an hour here and there totally in a day. I buy the promo to surf when I like to surf!
I don’t pay for bad milk either! I pay for good drinkable milk!
Hard logic for SMART people to understand?

I told Mr. Walter all that and I also told him to call me back when he had some answers to my questions, WHY the Internet connection didn’t work as advertised? I told him, not to come back to me empty handed!
He promised me, he will call me back next day at 2 pm.
He didn’t!
At about 3 pm I called him! He didn’t answer! Instead he sent a SMS message, saying he will call me at 4 pm.
He didn’t!
Then I sent him a SMS and asked when he will call me next time?
No answer!
He didn’t call me the next day either and he didn’t answer when I called him!
I started to wonder, maybe he had an accident or something? Maybe he was in a hospital? You can’t get angry if the guy is sick or dead?
I checked with the Hotline staff. He was working!
I left a message to the guy there, to tell Mr. Walter to contact me as soon as possible.
He didn’t contact me then and not at all up to this day!

I’ve sent some more and more angry reminders to him by SMS.
Maybe the nice and intelligent guy, Mr. Walter, was not so nice after all? Obviously, he can be an actor in Hollywood in the future! He sure is a talent!
“Dishonest shithead”, is other words that comes up to my mind!

SMART company seem to love dictatorship
Okay, what to do as a valued customer who actually are paying the SMART staff’s salaries?
It is closed doors between all different staff people in SMART company. The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.
Hotline staff are not allowed to go higher than to their own supervisors and the supervisors cannot go higher than to their own managers.
So what to do as a customer? We are not allowed to speak to higher managers because the Hotline staff will never be allowed to transfer our calls or give a message to higher managers to call us!
We are just allowed to speak to stupid toothless supervisors or lower managers, if we are lucky!
It means, that if we customers will be abused by scammers inside Hotline staff as an example, we can never reach any higher managers, so they can stop the scammers! We customers can just complain to the same people who abused us in the first place!
It is as stupid, as if a bank will hire a bank robber, to take care of the security in the bank!
Not any signs of intelligent thinking there, ha?

I’m rather sure that some guys in the Hotline staff, can put some extra money in their own pocket as long as they don’t solve the problems for the customers.
Instead of changing a broken expensive device, they just let the time fly and get a part of that device money to share amongst themselves.
The system itself makes it risk free for them!
Am I wrong?

Is it possible to reach a responsible person in SMART?
Well, I sent an email to a higher office in SMART, where I told this story.
I got a message back from them, thanking me for my information. They said they will investigate this and come back to me with their result.
Nothing more happened!
I sent two more emails to them, nothing happened!
New scumbags, with other words!

Full speed on SMART stupidities
The brand new lies from SMART’s Hotline now, is that there are too many users in the area! That is the reason why we experience these disconnecting problems.
All my friends here in Poblacion Bontoc, Southern Leyte, have of course the same Internet problems as I have.
Well folks, a lie will never be the same as the truth, even if you repeat the lie!

This disconnecting problem is the same if it is 3 pm or 3 am at night.
I guess most of the users are sleeping at 3 am, like the rest of the people around the world. Strange thought, ha? Obviously too intelligent for SMART’s staff!
Therefore, the problem has absolutely nothing to do with the number of users in the area! It is just a new unintelligent lie!

The final proof of the fraud
The latest explanation, is that SMART will make an expansion here in Poblacion Bontoc.
They cannot tell me WHEN that will happen! It can take a year, some idiot in Hotline told me the other day.
What does it mean?
Well, it makes everything clearer, that SMART is a fraud company!
Without any doubt, SMART knows that their system doesn’t work here in Bontoc anymore, but it did before!
Instead of changing the broken device in their base station here, they are just waiting for the day when they will make the expansion instead. That will be cheaper for SMART and they don’t care about, that we customers can’t use our Internet here, as long as we pay them.
They still sell Pocket Wifi and promos to customers, although they know that the customers can’t use it here in a proper way.
And worse, although they know about the Internet connection problems, they refuse to give a reversal of your money back to you, when it’s not working!
That is nothing more, nothing less or nothing else than a pure fraud against SMART’s customers!
What else can we call it? Well, we can also call them scammers of course!

The staff in SMART know about the broken device, which is the true reason why we customers have these disconnecting problems. Still they tell us a lot of bullshit, every time we call their Hotline.
I have tons of saved recorded phone conversations with the Hotline staff, that backs up every word in this chronicle.

I just want you to know, the facts behind this bullshit company!

Your question
A question you probably have right now as a reader of this chronicle, is WHY we don’t skip SMART and use another Internet provider?
The answer is very simple! We don’t have any alternatives here.
We also have GLOBE as an Internet provider, but they have exactly the same problems here. Strange ha? Globe was also working good before!
GLOBE probably has the same invisible owner, but in the papers, under another name. That’s normally a good way to kill competitors and get the market for themselves.
Of course I don’t know that, I’m just guessing.
Whatever, shit always smells shit, even if the shit is dressed up in a suit and a tie.

The bottom line
The bottom line here is the same. This is a fraud!
We customers are paying for Internet connections. That is our part in this!
SMART or GLOBE get payed by us, to provide us with Internet connections. That is their part in this.

In this case, we customers are paying for a service they don’t deliver to us!
The reason WHY they don’t give us the service we already paid for, is not our problems, it is their problems!
We customers should not have to listen to unintelligent lies or sick fantasies about jumping houses or base stations, broken Pocket Wifi or SIM cards, or stupidities like too many users in the area.
Just tell us the truth instead and fix the problems we are paying for!
Pay us back, if you can’t deliver the Internet connection!
Simple as that!

Maybe SMART and GLOBE will learn some day, what honesty means?

Maybe we customers can teach them, by spreading this chronicle like wild fire all over the Philippines?
Tell your friends and help your friends to inform others!
To help others, is to help yourselves to get a good and working Internet connection. Start now and do it every day!
I guess these dictatorship companies will understand this the hard way!
We just stop to use their fraud services more than absolutely necessary.
Money talks!

If any representatives from SMART or GLOBE find something wrong in this chronicle, you are more than welcome to make a comment below.
I promise to answer you!
If you are a customer like me, you are also free to write anything you like in English in the comment field.
Do you like when someone is stealing your money?
Oh, you don’t?
Well, let us then together stop fraud companies!

As always, I will inform you and reveal them!

Good luck!

/Lars Agerstig
International fraud investigator (and valued customer to fraud companies).
www.honesty4u.wordpress.com