It’s goodbye to SMART BRO.
After two years filled with irritation, incompetent customer service reps, and thousands of payment, we have ended our contract with SMART BRO and decided not to renew it anymore.
I’ve posted an entry about our dilemma with SMART BRO (see story) and it hasn’t changed since then. A few months ago, my husband got a SUN Broadband and we find that SUN offers more value for our money with its plan.
At P800 monthly, the plan provides us unlimited access to the Internet. Sure, there are days that its connection is down but at least, I don’t fear that when I receive the billing statement, I would be charged with thousands in connection I have never used.
And because of SUN, we have stopped using our SMART BRO in the last three months. We just waited for the contract to expire so we can finally have it disconnected.
Here’s a side note to this. I posted my SMART Bro dilemma in one of the Yahoogroups I belong to. One of the members, a SMART employee, was kind enough to ask permission if she can forward my concerns to their Interactive Social Media Services Group.
A few days after, I received an email from Ashley John Villaroman. In a nutshell, he wanted to find a resolution to our dilemma and, in the process, convince us not to end the contract.
But I was hell-bent on ending the contract. My husband and I feel that we didn’t get our money’s worth with the plan. I thanked Ashley John for his email and told him that we’re not changing our minds. But because I want SMART BRO’s service to improve, I emailed him all my concerns.
We have four major issues with SMART BRO: incompetent CSRs, SMART Connect being not updated, absurd charging and intermittent connection, and its brand manager Ava Espanola, who simply doesn’t care.
The funny thing is that after I sent my email, I never heard from him again. Hahaha! He probably didn’t expect a mouthful from me. But I guess I’ve made my case why SMART BRO is not worth renewing.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate SMART. I have been a loyal SMART Gold postpaid user for the last eight years. And because of SMART, I have never bought a cell phone in the last eight years. I just keep renewing my SMART Gold contract every two years and I receive a new cell phone every time.
But SMART Bro is a different matter altogether. So, goodbye to SMART BRO and good riddance!
Funny, but I have a great connection with Smart BRO here in the province. I switched to a Globe Broadband thinking I’d get an even better connection and had a horrific experience. I am thinking of ending it even before the lock-in period’s not finished. My work’s suffering because of Globe Broadband and I’d like to switch to Smart BRO again. Do you think I can do that considering they’re giving me poor service?
my suspicion is that the technology in our smart bro is outdated already. we got it when smart just soft-launched it. i assume that the later versions of smart bro is probably faster.
if you’re having problems with globe, by all means, have it disconnected. globe should be gracious enough to end the contract especially if it affects your work. plus, why should you be stuck with poor service?
thanks for dropping by, ms guimba!
hi there… I am also a smartbro user and i am planning to end my connection because of those problems, I just wonder if I can end it before the 1 year contract, would that be possible?
hi, junebride. you might be charged with a termination fee. check the contract you signed with smart bro just to be sure.
The article was relevant until you name dropped the Brand Manager. Are you even in the Corporate World? Do you actually think that a Brand Manager would go directly to a client’s concern? Her asking someone to call/email you was decent enough. There is such a thing as “proper delegation” .
cheers.
So the Brand Manager is one of the reasons why you’re dropping your subscription? Hahaha!
Personally, I also dropped my Smart Bro subscription. But, tagging the Brand Manager, is uh, well..a little to highschoolish. Either that you aren’t really aware of the corporate discipline.
jill, first of all, thank you for reading my blog.
second, yes, i’m from the corporate world. i’m a brand manager myself and brand managers are not supposed to sit behind their desks and typing their lives away. and if you even bothered to read about my other blog entries about smart bro, you would understand that i went through all possible channels of smart before i even tried contacting the brand manager. she was my last resort after all my attempts to resolve my concern remain, well, unresolved.
here’s brandma 101 for you: brand managers must go out their offices and check what his customers say about his brand. store check, consumer insighting, FGD, surveys, you name it. brand managers are not supposed to just email and call people.
yes, there’s such a thing as delegation but at the end of the day, the product is the brand manager’s accountability. brand managers are little general managers. whatever happens to his product is his responsibility annd accountability.
for your information, as a brand manager myself, i make sure that i address the concerns of my customers. it’s not even brandma 101. it’s common sense 101. why bother delegating when you can do it yourself? why let your customer go through all the red tape when you yourself can address the problem?
so before you rant about what you think is probably some blogger who doesn’t know anything about the corporate world, think again. a high school kid surely knows more about customer service than some brand managers out there.
pinayandmoney, that’s nicely and thoughtfully said.
also, to hell with the lock-in period! our lawmakers should pass a bill protecting consumer rights. the lock-in period should only apply if and only if the service is satisfactory. if it sucks, then that should nullify the contract.
im not anymore using smart bro postpaid because of unsatisfactory signal in our erea, its useless this connection and then I dont pay anymore the remain 21 months contract. The company acuse me?
@thth, i don’t think it’s right for you not to pay your bills. what you can do is contest the unsatisfactory signal with smartbro. tell them that you shouldn’t pay for something that you can’t use and that they should release you from the contract without charging you anything.