Saturday, September 15, 2007 Speak out: ‘Stolen’ Smart e-load By Jun Tariman
"GIKAWATAN ko’g load," cries a cell phone user when he checked his cell phone load after receiving the annoying message, "Check Operator."
Anyone can be a victim of this “crime.”
Thus, government's regulating agency, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has urged victims to file a complaint before their office.
“Asa ang office sa NTC?” asked a cell phone "load theft" victim.
If you are deprived of P20 out of your P30 electronic load, would you go to NTC and file the appropriate charge?
“Pag-solo,” said the guy.
If you're living in the south or in Cebu City, you have to travel to Subangdaku, Mandaue City to get to the NTC office and meet Director Danilo Sy.
"Langan-langan lang nas oras" would be a good reason for your reluctance to run after the operator who stole your P20 load.
In my case, I tried retrieving the e-load---my estimate is P110--taken from the P300 I loaded in my cell phone on Sept. 10, 2007.
Despite several attempts, I wasn't able to connect to the GPRS site of Smart.
Note that I was able to connect to the GPRS site of Smart the week before.
Smart’s customer service hotline (888) told us that about P110 was deducted from my P300-load for calling six times abroad on that evening alone.
I did not make such calls.
Since you can't file a complaint over the phone, I went to the Smart Wireless Center in SM City Cebu last Wednesday and got these details of the supposed overseas calls from my phone:
The calls, successive and of 10-11 seconds duration, could not have possibly been done manually.
But a timed machine initiating and ending the calls could do these.
Also, their record of the time I loaded the P300 Smart card was 20:11:29.
On the phone, the reflected time I loaded the amount was 8:19 p.m. of Sept. 10 (meaning, 20:19:00).
Note that the first four calls were all recorded as having been initiated before I loaded the P300 Smart card.
Why were the deductions made if indeed the calls were made before the card amount was loaded?
I raised this point to the customer service officer of Smart.
She told me that "maybe the phone I am using was programmed to initiate the call to that number."
I checked the phone.
No calls were registered in the call register or dialed number box.
The customer service officer tried to discourage me from pursuing my case.
But I insisted and told her that even if the amount is small, I will still file a complaint.
The complaint was filed and I was told to check after 24-48 hours to find out if the "stolen" load will be refunded by Smart.
I checked the area code listing in the Internet and found out that the number (00306975000000) has invalid area codes for any country.
I was still puzzled why such deductions were made when I honestly did not make any call.
Is there something wrong with Smart?
Is a hacker victimizing Smart and its helpless customers?
