The SMS spam issue has been hounding us for years now. Even with the passage of the Sim Registration Act, it would seem that the amount of spam we have been receiving has been increasing at an exponential rate. So when we received a message that read that our Easytrip account would be “deactivated” in ten days if we did not “get our ‘FREE’ replacement sticker,” we had to fight the urge to just immediately delete the message and block the number.
That’s the thing though, we couldn’t just block it because there was actually no mobile number to block. Yes, that means that the message came from the official Easytrip SMS account.
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If you send anyone a message, especially from an official account, and it warns you that your account will be deactivated, there is no doubt you would be left perturbed. Especially since our account had some load due to a recent trip up north. We decided to investigate and see why our account was subject to deactivation.
When we arrived at the Easytrip RFID station nearest us, we asked Easytrip if the message was legitimate, and why our account would be deactivated if we didn’t change our sticker. We were informed that this was for our “benefit” as their records showed that our specific sticker has had problems being scanned.
This wasn’t news to us. Since we got our RFID sticker a year ago, this specific RFID almost never worked. We can probably count on two hands the number of times this sticker was successfully scanned. The rest of the time, we had to manually scan the card to get through. What irked us is that it isn’t like we chose the RFID sticker or chose where it was placed, it was placed by their team.
Basically, they placed the onus on the user to come in to change not just the sticker, but also the card and account number. Annoyed, we filled-up the new sticker application form, and waited for the new sticker to be placed.
When the RFID was being removed, we were informed that the metal parts of the sticker had been baked onto the headlight of our vehicle. When we saw that some residue and the antenna was left behind, we were asked to have it removed the next time we had a car wash. We just ask the attendant to please just remove it, since he was about to just leave it on and walk away at the time. Thankfully, he did the small effort of scratching off the residue of their sticker.
When we went to customer service, as we were instructed to, since we had to transfer our prepaid load from our old account to our new account, we were told that it would take three working days for the transfer to be effective. This meant we had to actually load the new card just to get home, since our old load had not yet been transferred. To be fair to Easytrip, we got an email three days later that our balance had successfully been transferred.
We know this didn’t take too long, to be honest, it was about a fifteen-minute process, but having to go out of your way to go to an Easytrip station under the threat of account deactivation, especially when the actual reason wasn’t given in the SMS. It just rubbed us the wrong way that the reason turns out to be because their system showed that our sticker had a hard time being scanned, in other words, it wasn’t our fault.
You know what’s ironic? Even with the new sticker placed on our headlight, you guessed it, it still wouldn’t scan properly at Easytrip toll booths. When private subdivisions can have reliable RFID scanners, we have to wonder why is the burden on the user? Shouldn’t the burden shift onto the operator given the toll charges that we are subject to? As this sticker seems to be defective as well, will we receive another SMS like this sometime next year? Only time will tell.
Don’t ignore this SMS, but that shouldn’t detract from the fact that Filipino motorists deserve better.
