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February 14, Valentine’s day. I received my Globe Visibility bill. My fifth bill for this plan. I was surprised to see an adjustment entry worth 16k Php for excess usage. All the while I thought I got an unlimited plan at plan 3k. It turned out (according to Globe) that there was 5GB limit. If that is the case, why was I not billed for excess usage the previous months and why they are now billing me now the excess for just the month prior my current bill? Why? As usual I went through the customer service etc. I am awaiting for a copy of the contract that I signed… so it is pointless to discuss either my stupidity of not reading what I signed or Globe’s stupidity of not reading their own.

The issue for me at this point why was I allowed to reach 16k excess when I have a 3k limit. How can Globe help me by not overspending? I should have an advisory about me going over the limit. I didn’t. If I didn’t then risk managment group of Globe should have gotten an exception report somewhere and should have disconnected me. They did not. My analysis is that they don’t have anyway to monitor my usage level to identify and mitigate risks. The fact that they have to charge the excess in next month’s bill only shows that there is some issue in the processing of this usage information. This also means that it is impossible for them to give me that info. Therefore, there is nothing in place to protect the consumer from overspending. It also means that they don’t have anything in place to protect themselves from exposing the company to risk of non payment because they allowed such things to slip their risk management process. Granted I should probably take responsibility of my usage. It can’t be denied however that their system is inadequate to handle risk management related to Globe visibility usage. This also means that they allowed a product to be sold to the market even if this is defective. I used to work for a service provider that creates applications for Globe. I know how strict their sign off process was. This type of scenaraio wouldn’t have passed in the old days. It is obvious that they came up with a product that is half baked. No controls in place. It is not even due to buggy control mechanisms. It is purely absent.

Probably the number of visiblity users are too few to consider it a risk. Well bottomline is Globe released a product without enough controls in place to protect themselves and the consumer. They can always argue that they are protected by a contract. Then again if they knew they were releasing a defective product and made sure to cover up their negligence with a contract then isn’t that fraud?