The Inefficiency of Meralco

Last Tuesday, the night Basyang hit Manila, I heard sparkling electricity outside my window. I was alarmed when I noticed that everytime I heard the electricity cackle, the lights in our house would blink to the same rhythm. Later I found out that part of the cables directly outside our house was exposed so that everytime the wind blew, the wires sparked and the electricity in our house would fluctuate. I went down to the office to place a phone call to Meralco, and before I could, the lights suddenly went out. Sheesh.

It was so damn hard to get through the hotline, but my patience paid off and I was able to talk to a customer service representative. I aired my concerns, and halfway through the phone conversation, the whole subdivision was bathed in darkness, which I later heard was Luzon-wide. I was advised to turn off the main switch and was actually impressed when the girl promised me that a technician will come by within 2 to 4 hours. I kept my mobile phone's profile on loud so that I'll be easily awakened when they come by to fix the problem.

Sadly, when I woke up in the morning, no technicians showed up. But I already expected that since typhoon "Basyang" may have damaged other areas far worse than ours. Nevertheless, my mom and I expected that Meralco will attend to the problem within the day. Or the next day at the latest.

I got home from work Wednesday afternoon and we still didn't have electricity. It was still forgivable since the whole neighborbood was still a total blackout. But I called up Meralco to follow up the status of our report. I also reminded them that our house lost electricity even before the nationwide blackout, and I feared that when the electricity goes back on, ours will still not work.

Thursday went, and then Friday. By that time, our neighbors already had their electricity back on. I followed up with Meralco and they kept giving me promises AND excuses. *sigh* By Sunday I was fed up and had to be really obnoxious about it. Finally, they made good on their promise and fixed the wires before lunch. Thank God!

Frankly, I'm quite disappointed. It took them 5 days to fix the damn wires! And I had to be mataray about it before they addressed our problems! What kind of customer service is that?!