DTI chief to order telcos to remove expiry dates on prepaid loads

Department of Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon M. Lopez expressed that he is against expiry dates imposed on telephone and internet card load credits and will order telcos to remove them.

In a report by Manila Bulletin, Lopez told the media that he is “not aware that telecommunications firms still impose expiry dates on prepaid telephone and internet loads.”

“These services have already been paid for by the consumer. I do not see any reason why the buyer will be denied the use of the services or goods in the future,” Lopez explained.

The DTI chief also vowed to look into complaints and will assign Undersecretary Zenaida Maglaya to handle it.

In a report by Business Mirror, Lopez said that they will tell the telco to remove expiry dates for prepaid load cards, following the example of business establishments that have already removed expiry periods for gift cards/certificates.

“Business establishments have already removed the expiry periods for GCs. Now, we will tell the telco to follow and remove the expiry dates for cell-phone pre-paid load cards… in principle, you already paid that,” Lopez said.

Hit sources link below for the full reports.

source: Manila Bulletin, Business Mirror

Diangson Louie

This article was written by Louie Diangson, Managing Editor of YugaTech. You can follow him at @John_Louie.

https://www.yugatech.com

5 Comments

The Barat Queen says:

8 years ago

This is great, especially for those who have low usage. It’s already paid in advance, there shouldn’t be any expiration.

I’d love to maintain a P100 balance on my 2nd phone, so I can call or reply to people from that network any time, but the hoops I need to jump through to keep that P100 from expiring is too much work. So I end up just leaving it with zero balance nalang and then just reloading it from my GCash when I really need to use it. It’s really annoying but it’s better than losing a few hundred pesos of load just because it expired.
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THE BOORAT KING says:

8 years ago

Awesome news! I have a couple of throwaway numbers I use for pesky and untrustworthy people.
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Reiks says:

8 years ago

This is great news for people who dont register to promos and prefer to use their regular loads like me.
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vm303 says:

8 years ago

as a compromise, anything above 100 php has a minimum life of 1 year. pwede na yun
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Marius de Jess says:

6 years ago

What about share-a-load?

Today, June 16, 2018, I just lost 507 pesos of Globe prepaid load, owing to my expiry date is June 16, 2018.

And upon checking my balance, it is indeed reported as zero balance.

But I received text messages, and I succeeded to send text messages: so notwithstanding that my balance is now zero, the cellphone still works at least for text messages – even though the balance is reported as zero.

It must be because I received a share-a-load of 101 pesos 45 days earlier: wherefore even though my balance is reported as zero, in fact the 507 pesos have not been confiscated by Globe, because as long as the one year period has not been completed, and the balance is not used up, then the cellphone continues to work: i.e. until the balance is all used up, or the one year expiry time is already completed (even though there is still balance left).

But I have not used my cellphone for any voice call from at this point in time.

Question: Perhaps voice calls will not be available because the reported balance is already zero?

What do you guys say, who are more experienced?
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