Sunday, July 20, 2008 Malilong: Hilutungan fee, phone firms' schemes By Frank Malilong The Other Side
COMING from a trip to Tubigon, Bohol early in April this year, our group decided to drop by the Hilutungan channel to take a dip in the water and watch the fish in the sanctuary. Before we could even drop anchor, two men on a small boat came and demanded an entrance fee of P100 from each one of us, including those who didn’t plan to swim.
I thought that ours was an isolated incident, a crude attempt by island folk to make quick money from outsiders. Then last Friday, I read Cebu Investment Promotion Center Managing Director Joel Mari Yu’s open letter relating exactly the same experience.
Joel said he and his foreign guests did not pay. Neither did we. One hundred pesos isn’t really much but the thought of being mulcted in your own province is particularly repugnant.
We used to enjoy our beaches until some businessmen decided to claim them as their own by erecting formidable fences and posting security guards around them. Now, we can’t even swim or sail in certain parts of the sea unless we pay an entrance fee. What will they think of next? Charge us for the air we breathe?
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After I had my pre-paid phone loaded with P300 worth of credit from my regular mobile subscription, I received the following text message from the phone company: “Thank u 4 loading P300 w/ free txt of 35. Ur load will b valid for 60 days. Wen u fully consume ur credits, pls reload immediately to prevent deactivation of ur acct. U can now share-a-load2 ur friends by txting d amt. to 2 plus ur friend’s mobile#.”
Do you remember how it feels when you discover that you have just been had? That was what I felt after reading the message: sick in the stomach.
The P300 that I “shared” was going to be on my bill. That was my property. When I loaded it on my pre-paid line, that remained my property. And the law is that you can do anything with your property for as long as you do not prejudice others in the process.
So why should I be told that I have to use my load for 60 days otherwise it will no longer be valid? Who pockets the amount that I lost by reason of the non-use?
And why should my pre-paid subscription be deactivated if I do not reload immediately? I paid good money for the SIM pack and I am sure the money went to the mobile phone company.
There ought to be a law to protect consumers from this unfair, to say the least, practice. Congress should not leave us to the mercy of the phone companies who must be making millions of pesos every month from unused loads or deactivated phone lines.
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Thought for the day: “There are deeper conflicts. Different views of God, of religion, and of the place of human beings in the universe are in a collision course. Are human beings to be servants of a system, religious or otherwise, or is the purpose of religion to emancipate us for an intimate, free, and energizing relationship with God?
“Good religion doesn’t consist only in ritualistic rules and regulations. An important claim is human need, and the prime law of good religion is love.”--from “366 Days with the Lord.”
