On April 29^th and 30^th I received an SMS broadcast message from SMART. The message contained something that sounded too good to be true.

This was the message I got from SMART on April 29^th:

FREE ADVISORY: Effective
May 1 enjoy lower rates -
MMS at PhP1.00
Smart2Smart / PhP2.00
Smart2Others; 30 mins
browsing 4only PhP10.00!
See print ads for details

This was the message I got on April 30^th:

FREE ADVISORY: Efectiv Mai1
3G VideoCol=FREE;Browsing=
P10for30 mins; 3G Streaming
/Download wil b chargd;C
print ands/ www.smart.com.ph
/Col *888 for details.

Today decided to go check it out and did a little web browsing, after all it’s only PhP10 per 30 minutes! This was instead of their usual PhP0.25 per Kilobyte of data transfered. I had just loaded PhP300 last Saturday so I thought I would have enough balance to try Internet browsing. So I went on and tried accessing my GMail account. Read some of my email, and it was so far so good.

Then about 5 minutes later, I decided to try accessing my blog…

The homepage loaded fine at first, then when the last image is about to load the GPRS connection icon disappeared. Apparently, I had been disconnected so I tried reconnecting. This time I could not reconnect. My celphone told me to “Check Network Services”. When I was in Manila, I have had this sort of thing happen to me on their 3G network. I figured it was normal and that their network was just clogging up. So I decided to stop browsing thinking everything was OK.

Later, my wife wanted to send herself some credit via SMART’s PasaLoad. For some reason, the phone kept saying “Check Network Services”. I began to think “WTF?!?”. So I dialled 1515 to check my balance. Lo and behold, the response was:

02May 11:56:Your current
balance is P0.00 and 15 free
txt msgs.

So I was like “WHAT?!?” and I was screaming profanities all over the place. I called up my sister and asked her if she was having the same problem and she send “No.” and that everything works as advertised since she was in Manila and in the 3G network. Genuinely incensed by all this, I decided to check out [SMART's website][smartass] “for details”. Maybe I missed something.

After bit of searching, I found [what I was looking for][threeg].

It clearly says on their 3G rates page:

Internet/WAP browsing*

GPRS – P10/ 30 mins.
3G – P10/ 30 mins.

The astrixed bit says:

*Above rates also apply when not using the 3G network.

Given all that above my balance should not have bottomed out like it did. I don’t think I am missing something. It also clearly states on their homepage that 3G is “NATIONWIDE” which is not entirely true as it is available only in selected cities and municipalities.

I’m not ranting because where I live, I still don’t have 3G access. I’m not ranting because GPRS is dead slow and prone to disconnection. I’m ranting because of the misleading SMS broadcast from SMART and the misleading 3G rates page on their website.

Someone obviously screwed up big time at the marketing department. I’m all for viral marketing and everything (saves tons o’ money in advertising) but this is utterly repulsive!

I mean read their SMS broadcast again. Maybe I’m not really a txtr kind of guy but look at those messages, don’t they tell you that Internet browsing is PhP10 per 30 minutes? Plus their 3G rates page on their website says “Above rates also apply when not using the 3G network.” So given all this, one would assume that the new rates apply to all sites.

But WTF?!? I just blew off PhP300 trying out this crappy service.

I’m posting screenshots of their website’s relevant pages here before they can update those pages. Judge for yourself…

[smartass]: http://www.smart.com.ph/ “SMART ASS DUMBASSES” [threeg]: http://www.smart.com.ph/SMART/Services/3G/SMART_3G_Rates.htm “SMART 3G Rates”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Yes, I do have a Life.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.