The Power of Email Complaints.

One of the things I've learned from work is when someone writes a personal email it's usually escalated to the right people as compared to complaining via the hotline/customer service. (Especially when complaints drop names like NTC, DTI, etc.) I'm not trying to undermine the people from the call centers but they usually just follow the protocols in their monitor then say whatever they're supposed to say.

Anyway here's what happened, the previous tenant of our condo unit had unpaid charges for Sky Cable and Sky Broadband. Cable's around P1,000 then Broadband's around P4,000 so that's P5,000 unpaid bills that they're trying to bill us. Now the thing is, the tenant already migrated to Australia and we don't really know how to track her down, I tried leaving offline messages in her YM, tried to email her, and tried to text her old number which is supposed to be on roaming, but she hasn't been replying. So when I called their hotline, the Sky Cable's rep told me that it's our responsible to pay for it. Since we allowed the transfer of name to us, we're actually liable for the charges. (WTF right?)

I asked a lawyer friend about it, and she said that we have a contract lease in the condo that proves what date we actually moved in, and the charges incurred were not during our stay so we shouldn't pay for it.

So what I did was I shoot out an email to Sky Cable, sent it to the customer service email address hoping it would be forwarded to the right people. I even dropped a line that we already consulted our lawyer for legal advise (dropping names or semi threats usually help) that we were instructed not to pay for it (well, I actually asked for legal advise even if it was just via YM). My only mistake was that I mentioned in the email that we don't mind paying for the Sky Cable charges, the P1,000 incurred by the previous tenant. Well, which was really my stand, for me it's a compromise. I'd rather pay the P1,000 from Sky Cable, than pay all the P5,000 charges which includes the Sky Broadband which we've never used.

I also complained that they shouldn't have let the previous tenant transfer the account to Ian's name without her paying her previous charges. I explained that we could just 'con' the next tenant into the same predicament we're in when we move out, but we're not that kind of people, since we're honest when it comes to these things and we always pay our bills on time so we really want this to be settled. I don't really like getting disconnection notices. Oh, plus I don't want Ian's name to be tainted in Sky. (I'm not posting the email I sent because it's REALLY long) Sky Cable should really change their policies with these kind of things, because we just gave the tenant a letter for a request of transfer of names but the letter never mentioned anything about transferring charges to us.

After a month's time,lo and behold, we got our bill. The good news is, they already dropped the Sky Broadband charges. Hooray. The bad news is, they really took my email seriously that they're seriously allowing/asking us to pay the P1,000 Sky Cable charges. Crap, my bad! I shouldn't have said anything in the email.

Rica's stand, P1,000 is better than P5,000
Sky's stand, P1,000 is better than nothing

Lesson learned: Just have the previous tenant disconnect EVERYTHING before you move in, then just reapply for the services needed.