Real Deal or Real Ill Will?

Philippine Airlines (PAL) recently offered The Real Deal Promo where international fares were at rock bottom prices. 

I don’t recall seeing PAL airfares this low.  Imagine going to many destinations and back for less than half the regular fare , it doesn’t get any better than that.  You are almost tempted to ask, is this too good to be true?

The answer is YES!

I am not referring to the prices. While the promo was true to its claim regarding ticket prices (e.g. roundtrip to the US incl. travel tax is just about P25,000 or $520, roundtrip to HK is just P5400 or $110), the PROBLEM WAS HOW YOU ARE EVER GOING TO BOOK AND BUY YOUR TICKETS.

The promo was exclusively offered for just 2 days and you have to purchase the tickets online.    So come midnight of Apr 27, I opened the PAL website ready to make my online purchase.    And I couldn’t believe how slow the site was.  I had to try a hundred times within 4 hours during the wee hours of the morning before I was even prompted for payment.  And after keying in my credit card details, the screen went blank on me and soon gave me an error message.   I got anxious over it, worrying whether I should re-book at the risk of double-charging or not.

The following morning, I got confirmation from my bank that no payment from PAL was effected.   I then tried to book online again but the same thing happened.   Seeing how hopeless it will be to try to book online, I called the PAL customer service hotline.   After about 2 hours of trying to connect my call, I finally got my booking reference number and was told that I could just go to my preferred ticketing office to pay. I said to myself, this is okay.  I will still get the online fare rate and I can manage to sneak to the ticketing office the following day with my sister in law after dropping off my nephew to school, and be back in time to pick him up.

I could never be more wrong.  When we finally got to the ticketing office at around 11am, we were astounded to see the sheer volume of people waiting inside.   If my estimate is right, there were over 3000 people who wanted to transact on that day.  People were everywhere trying to ask what to do next and were given conflicting instructions.  Some were told to just get the customer queue stubs;  Some were told to just write their names in a piece of paper. 

After lodging our names in the paper, I thought that maybe this will take me about 2 hours considering there were 25 counters open, so I can manage a 2-hour wait.   Again, I could never be more wrong.   The 2 hours stretched to 9 maddening hours!!!  Throughout that time, I saw people ultra-pissed at the lack of system in the way PAL is managing the surge in customers.   People were lost.   They didn’t know where to go, where to list their names, where to get their tickets, where to sit down to wait, who to approach, etc.  The people who came after lunch were advised that for as long as they are there before 5pm (closing time), they shall be served.  PAL will do overtime or overnight just to accommodate everybody who came before the cut off date.

But at around 5pm, PAL announced that they cannot serve everybody and that those whose names were listed in pages 4 onwards would have to come back the following day. That's insane!  Imagine, after waiting for hours and hours, you will be asked to just come back the following day and go through the same ordeal all over again?   Thank God our names were listed in page 2!

I cannot believe how unprepared PAL was for this promo.  First, they under-forecasted the public response.   This is a big no-no.  If you are going to offer something good, you better be sure that you have the sufficient capacity to actually fulfill that promise.   It is always better to over-prepare than to under-serve.  Their website was ill-prepared for the surge in hits and traffic.  Why make the promo online if the system can’t handle it?   There may be cases of double booking and those poor people will have to wait 2 weeks or more before charges can be reversed.   

Second, PAL should have had a back up plan.  Obviously, there wasn’t one.  The phone hotlines were forever busy, the ticketing offices were undermanned, the customer care people were not there to help manage the complaints.   At the very least, they could have offered free coffee or water to people waiting.  They should have provided for extra chairs inside the ticketing office.  They ought to have opened up a few telephone hotlines to answer queries.   There should should have been regular updates in the PA system on what was currently happening. There ought to have been at least a flow chart at the entrance of each ticketing office explaining the step by step process for the real deal promo ticketing.   These things are fairly easy to do; I don’t know why they haven’t thought of them. 

I pity the ground staff who had to bear the brunt of the customer complaints. This can already be classified as a crisis – a customer bad will crisis, one of the more terrifying things that can happen to a your customer relations strategy.  Apparently, there was no crisis management and no customer care management neither. The real deal turned out to be a real ill-will.

Fortunately, I am more relaxed and less uptight lately, so I waited patiently and passively compared to other customers.   Had I been caught in a bad mood, I would have left immediately after being given conflicting directions.  Patience indeed is rewarding.   I got our tickets.   I saved quite a lot, especially since we booked 6 tickets in all.   Unfortunately, I am not that grateful.  I didn’t ask for this promo anyway as a special favor.  PAL offered it, they are duty bound to honor it.  That is precisely why I have decided to rant about my real hassle from the real deal promo in this post. 

 

 

 

A Fork in the Road

As we journey journey through life, we will come across a fork in the road.   These forks can be life altering as our lives will ultimately be a function of those road choices that we make. Sometimes the choice is obvious, but often times, we won't be as lucky.  There will be days when we'll just have to flip the coin and leave the decision unto chance.

I am at one fork in the road today.  And I have to make a choice between becoming:

An Underpaid Writer

or  

An Overpaid Gofer

This is a very obvious choice for me.  I'd choose to do the job that underpays. 

Not that it was an easy choice to make; I badly need money too, but then I thought, now is the perfect time to do something completely different from what I have been doing in the last 12 years of my life.  While the years that I have slaved away in the corporate sector have been a soul-enriching experience for me, that sense of fulfillment has eluded me.  And so, I must look for contentment in other places.  This career shift is going to be one of my many leaps of faith.

An underpaid writer is in the league of starving artists and social workers, people who pursue their passions and their dreams.  Mostly, these are happy, contented people compared to the financially stable androids who drudge away in the corporate sector.   If I could be half as fulfilled as these people, I would know I have made the right choice.  

Sure, I'd be paid a pittance, but I don't mind; it will stay pay off some of my recurring bills.   Besides, I am new to this career.   My friend Ben said that maybe after a few writing projects, I can work my pay scale up.  Yes, it is like throwing away the 11 years I have devoted to my old career.  I am going back to square one.   I am starting over.

 

I guess I am becoming old.  I never saw this coming (me not taking the practical route).   Even I surprise myself lately.   I am turning over a new leaf.   

Callousness of Authorities to Those Who Grieve

Let me move away from silly things for a while to write about something more current and sensitive.

I was completely shocked to see the news tonight about how the QC police has arrested relatives (sisters and brother) of Ted Failon's wife for obstruction of justice.   Whether Ted Failon's wife committed suicide or not, the fact still remains that she was in her death bed during the arrest.   It was known that the wife has already received extreme unction and that her BP was already very low, 50/95.   Everyone knew it was a very critical case, and she could expire any minute.   

Everyone except the QC police.  Couldn't they have given the relatives courtesy to be beside their sister as she moves on to the next life?  And the manner by which they arrested the "suspects" was contemptible.   Did they have to use brute force?  I am glad the Commission on Human Rights saw something wrong in the way the QC police is handling this case.  

Click on this link to see the arrest of the relatives and view the video below for the CHR's reaction to the arrest.

But don't get me wrong.  I am not taking the side of Ted Failon's camp here.   There are fishy details surrounding this incident and there might be foul play involved after all.   But there is due process.   You don't presume someone is guilty, and from the looks of how the relatives were forcibly taken, they were already treated like criminals.   

Just how callous can you get?  Can being face to face with deaths on a regular basis desensitize you?

I remember a time when I accompanied someone whose mom has passed away the night before to the City Hall to file for a death certificate.   We wanted to know what the procedures were for filing and we approached a certain lady in the concerned department.  Then the lady said, where is the body?  My friend said that the body was taken to a province in Rizal, her birth town and where she will be eventually buried.   Then the lady chastised him because they shouldn't have moved the body without the proper papers.   She was asking him all sorts of questions which my friend couldn't answer for obvious reasons: he was still in shock and in grief for just losing his mother.  

That lady in the City Hall showed no sympathy at all.  She seemed pissed even that he couldn't provide the details she was asking.   She even raised her voice at him. I couldn't believe how she treated my friend.   I was angry at that lady for being utterly insensitive and callous to someone who just suffered a great loss,  and yet, all my friend and I managed to do was hold back our tears and walk away.   

Just how can you lose empathy?  How can you remain unmoved by pleads of compassion or moments of helplessness?  How can you lose your heart?  I don't understand.  I really don't.

There's a Hole in My Sidewalk

I read this beautiful piece of inspirational writing a decade or so ago and I chanced upon it while going through my old stuff today.   This is the story of Portia Nelson's Life in 5 short chapters.

There's a Hole in My Sidewalk

by Portia Nelson

Chapter 1

I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.

I am lost...I am helpless.

It isn't my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don't see it.

I fall in again.

I can't believe I am in the same place.

Bit it isn't my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I see it is there.

I still fall in....it's a habit.

My eyes are open.

I know where I am

It is my fault.

I get out immediately.

Chapter 4

I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

Chapter 5

I walk down another street.
I just thought I'd post and share this while we do our own reflection this Holy Week.   Wherever chapter you may find yourself in right now, just know that there is always a Supreme Being out there who will show you the way out of your hole and guide you as you walk down another street.  Have a meaningful holy week everyone!

You are What You Eat

You are what you eat.

Whatever we shove in our mouth does more than satisfy our hunger, it ultimately affects our state of mind and health.   Simply put, if you eat good, healthy food, you'd get a good, healthy mind and body.  Eat junk food and you are in deep shit (deep fat, actually).

This is what our mothers and every diet book written tell us.   Even  database marketing practitioners subscribe to this adage as they customize promotional offers for customers based on what they buy in grocery stores and eat in restaurants.  But nothing could be more literal in the interpretation of this maxim than the pictures below.  Pictures truly are worth a thousand words.

Photo courtesy of allposters.com

Photo courtesy of trendhunter.com

Photo courtesy of worth100.com

Photo courtesy of  allposters.com

Photo courtesy of trendhunter.com

I wonder if eating too much chocolate will make one chocolatey-dark?   And if "you are what you eat" is literally true, we now know the culprit for the orange peel looking cellulite covered thighs:  those darn oranges and lemons! 

But as for me, the image below is so, so true.   I eat a lot, and sad isn't it that everything I eat goes to the hips?

Photo courtesy of etsy.com