Philippines ISPs: An Example Why Filipino Businesses Fail to Scale and Establish Themselves to be International Brands
I’m a Filipino, a local resident of the Philippines. I experience first-hand transactions with people and businesses almost on a daily basis.
I think that’s fair enough to have a bit of ‘karapatan’ or the rights to say what I’m about to share. As a disclaimer, this is not an opinion of an expert, but more of real life experience and a point-of-view of a long-term consumer. This is also based on what I have observed in the past 8–10 years.
I wrote this article out of frustration with a bit of rage. Frustration, that I can’t just deal with because it’s actually affecting my daily life, more specifically my work, but I didn’t write this to ridicule anyone. It’s for the local businesses, to bring up their ‘A Game’ before their gain.
It’s about my frustration over our internet slash ‘hindernet’ connection at home. We’re currently subscribed to SmartBRO and it’s failing us, big time and we’ve been dealing with it or should I say bearing with it for several months now.
To give you a bit of background, we’re currently residing in Calumpit, Bulacan. Technically a province, about 50 kilometers away more or less from Metro Manila. As we call it in Tagalog ‘malayo sa kabihasnan’ or far away from the civilization.
That given, plus the infamous traffic in manila, my brother and I decided to work remotely. Working from home obviously, needs a reliable internet connection.
Before you recommend another ISP, I mentioned our location because it’s one of the reasons why we can’t just switch to another ISP. We’re a bit out of reach. Our location, sad to say, isn’t really a priority for corporations, maybe because we’re just a small community to invest money in.
Though the connection is fast enough to accomplish most of our tasks, the problem with it is stability and customer service. It’s terribly unstable. It’s either disconnecting from a minimum of 20 times a day, or lag like hell producing a 25k/ms ping (terribly slow) response that can last for hours.
It’s definitely a great, lucky day for us if we won’t experience any problems with it, but usually hate it, specially when we have to submit something immediately (like uploading files) or taking a (VoIP) call from a client and it will act-up.
I believe that we’ve done our part more than enough by reaching out to their customer support for months. So far, there’s barely a change. Though every report that my brother made was always marked as resolved, we still experience the same bad connection everyday.
Probably the most upsetting thing that he’s been experiencing for several months is when he contacts them and has to repeat and explain the problem, just to do a scripted quick solutions like a torture routine, e.g. Turning the device off and on, doing speed tests (with suspicious, probably manipulated results), rebooting, directing the RJ45 cable to his PC etc., every single time. No matter how hard he explains that he already did the routine, the “customer support” will insist to do it again and if it won’t get fixed they’ll say that it has to be monitored for 48–72 hours. It’s like we’re just calling to waste our time.
Don’t be surprised, I’m not the only one experiencing bad internet connection here. I’m talking in general, All ISPs here have their fare share of complaints and raging customers. Not to mention expensive.
Okay, you might be asking now what’s it got to do with the majority of the local businesses here in the Philippines? What’s my take why they fail to establish and be an actual, international brand like McDonalds, GAP, Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, UNIQLO etc.?
There are lots of probable factors, but in my observation, It’s mainly because of greed and the ‘Pwede na yan!’ (That’s good enough!) mentality.
A lot of businesses here starts great. I mean really great. From promos to quality products and services. From restaurants, to snacks, to clothing lines.
After a while, once they get enough traction and reach a certain level of popularity, they’ll enter the mainstream, the popular brands’ line-up. What do they do? They’ll try to scale as fast as they can, then they’ll try to maintain or worst bump their pricing while reducing the quality of the product or their service. They usually look for ways to maximize profit, even if it means sacrificing the quality of their product and/or their service.
As I’ve been observing it for years, I noticed that there’s a probability that it will not stop. It’s sad to see it repeating like a pattern, from one business to another, and no matter how many complaints they got, as long as more money comes in, based on their actions, they’re fine with that. In my heart, I know that It will only get worst, but I still have a bit of hope left that I’ll be proven wrong.
If you’re also a or once been a local like me, you’re probably used to say or hear the phrase ‘Hindi na sila gan’on kasarap, tulad ng dati’ (The taste isn’t as good as they were before). Meaning the quality (of the food) deteriorated over time.
Sure, some brands like Jollibee and Bench may have been able to open stores overseas, but in terms of reputation, I’m not really sure/confident that people in those countries (excepting Filipinos) got excited when they announced that they’ll be opening up a store on their location. They might get curious, but excited? I’m not so sure about that.
By the (deteriorating) quality of their product and/or services, It’s a good basis that they barely care about us, their customers. Again, I’m saying this as a first-hand consumer of these products and services. These corporations and businesses focus more on what they can get and how they can get more instead of focusing on how to improve the quality of their product and services. To serve better.
ISP’s specifically can or will even trap you usually for 2–3 years (they call it lock-in period) so you have no other choice but to stay with them, no matter how bad your experience with their service or you’ll be forced to pay up the pre-termination fee.
Here’s an excerpt from SmartBRO’s Terms and Conditions:
6.1 Termination by Subscriber. The Subscriber may terminate his subscription in writing by giving one (1) month prior notice for cancellation and by fully settling all his outstanding obligations with SBI. If termination is made during the lock-in period as stated in the Subscriber Application Form, the Subscriber shall pay a pre-termination fee in the amount of the full Monthly Service Fee multiplied by the number of the months left in the lock-in period as stated in the Subscriber Application Form or as may be specified at the sole discretion of SBI. In determining the unexpired period, a fraction of a month shall be considered as one (1) month.
Imagine that! Paying up the remaining months of your subscription just to get rid of a bad internet connection that you can’t even use! They’ll even threat you to that you’ll get banned from their services if you’ll not pay for something they promised and can’t deliver. How greedy and SMART!
I’m not sure if you’ll agree with me, but I believe that’s a strong, probable reason why ‘Tangkilikin ang sariling atin’ (A Tagalog slogan to support local products and services over foreign brands) isn’t happening.
Foreign, international brands win our hearts because they care for their customers. Sure, some of them are pricey, but the quality? Definitely not equal to what most famous local brands and services offer. It’s also a good reason why international brands like the ones that I mentioned earlier usually rip their way to our markets without too much effort and have been consistently growing their market share.
I usually see my fellow Filipinos get excited when a famous, foreign brand announces that they’ll be expanding out their business here in our country. Even rumors like the most recent one from ‘Telstra’.
Why is that? Is it because we don’t want to support our local businesses and or them to succeed? Nope, I don’t think so. In fact, we still buy local stuff because it’s way cheaper than the imported ones, but not purely because we want to support the local industry or love their product, but because we barely have a choice, either literally or financially.
Filipinos are known to claim ‘Proud to be Pinoy’ when they see their fellow Filipinos like Manny ‘Pacman’ Pacquiao reaching the top. So why can’t we do that to our top performing local brands?
Probably because we’re not proud of them. I’m not. Some of us even hate them, not because they’re just local, but because we usually feel cheated for paying something that wasn’t fully delivered to us. We are overexposed to false advertisements. These companies over-promise, but under-deliver.
It’s a steal if you can get, stable and fast internet connection without bandwidth limit (or at least 2–3GB up) for 50 pesos a day, but a slow, unstable internet connection for 50 pesos a day w/ 800mb-1gb cap? No, thank you.
Some might say, ‘Well, you get what you pay for’. Sure, I agree. I won’t argue with that and that’s not my point. In fact, I’m usually satisfied, even surprised to pay for something less than usual. CDRKing is a good example, though technically, they're not selling locally made products, but hey!
I’m not saying that that there’s no chance for these local businesses and brands to establish a good, international reputation, but I’m pretty sure they won’t if they can’t even satisfy the locals, their own ‘kababayan’.
And going back to the phrase ‘You get what you pay for’? That’s probably one good reason why we Filipinos buy, support, follow and even promote these international brands; Because we usually get what we’re paying for.
I wrote this article, a year ago and I think it’s still valid. Good news is that I’m currently happy with the way the recent events turned out, including my current subscription with Globe. Still, I’m hoping that the improvements that I saw and experienced will keep improving.
Again, I’m no expert, but hey! Thanks for reading! Also, if you liked what you read, sharing it and hitting recommend would make me very happy!
