Consumers shouldn’t hold their breath at all. For sure, they cannot expect immediate relief from alleged telco abuse despite all the recent posturing of regulators at the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC). The consumer battle against telecommunication companies, particularly against abuse in billings, is far from over.

And judging from the public declarations of the telcos themselves, they are not about to give up the fight against new NTC orders that intend to prolong or extend the expiry dates of prepaid cellular-phone load, or to address the issue of so-called vanishing load. With the way things are, people can expect a protracted fight.

Globe Telecom, for one, says it is preparing a motion for reconsideration, perhaps in the hope of keeping the status quo, rather than have the NTC implement new regulations that are seemingly favorable to consumers. Telcos, meanwhile, are also providing inputs to the Senate on remedial legislation being drafted jointly by the trade and commerce and the public-services committees.

The fight is on three fronts: the NTC, Senate and the public arena. And the NTC fight, for sure, will eventually become a legal battle in court, with the parties invariably seeking legal remedy against each other. The Senate fight, meanwhile, will consequently be influenced by political considerations.

In this line, it is highly unlikely that any clear resolution, particularly one that truly benefits consumers and protects their rights and interests against seemingly valid complaints, will come about anytime soon. There are enough loopholes in regulatory, legal and legislative processes to delay the likes of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and lawyer Rod Domingo.

If not for the duo’s noise against the telcos previously, the NTC would have remained the callous agency that it was, with little care for consumers and customer service. And there would have been little impetus for them to issue new policies relative to extending the validity of prepaid-load credits and address complaints regarding vanishing load credits.

Perhaps at this point it will be more beneficial to the public if the telcos can transparently account particularly for cell-phone billings by disclosing their financials to regulators and, at the same time, clearly explaining to the public how prepaid load or credits are sold or purchased and consumed. It is only in disclosing how much they actually make that the public can convincingly determine abuse, or lack of it.

As was noted in this column previously, the practice of requiring postpaid subscribers to pay their cell-phone bills in advance, inclusive of the value added-tax or VAT, seems unfair to consumers as well as to the government. How come with other utilities like electricity and water, which are likewise “metered” like so-called post-paid cell-phone plans, consumers are billed based on actual consumption, and pay only after the billing cycle?

In the case of my Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) bill, for instance, payment due date is nine days after the end of the billing cycle. As for my Manila Water bill, payment due date is also nine days after the end of the billing cycle. But for my Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) residential line, payment due date is six days before the end of the billing period. The same system applies to my Smart line, with payment due date five days before the end of the billing cycle. Worse, for PLDT and Smart, the current bills are actually paid for the the billing cycle the month ahead.

Unlike my electricity, water and cable-TV bills, my telcos bills are fixed or are based on a plan, are paid not solely on the basis of consumption, are always billed a month in advance, and payment is required even before the end of the billing cycle or the service is actually fully consumed. One cannot help but ask how the NTC can allow this for telcos when other utilities don’t do the same.

And as noted also previously, the seeming advantage to telcos here is the “float.” As phone companies collect bill payments in advance, along with the corresponding VAT, and defer booking that collection as income until the service is completed or actually rendered, then they can hold onto the cash meantime and possibly earn interest on it.

That’s in the case of so-called post-paid subscriptions only. What about prepaid credits that were never used at all? Say, one bought P300 in prepaid load good for 60 days, but within that period used up only P200 worth of credits. Automatically, the remaining P100 in load or credits will be forfeited or lost. It will vanish, so to speak.

This situation begs the following questions. Do telcos pay VAT on pre-paid load sold through cards or e-load, just like postpaid subscriptions? Also, in the case of the forfeited P100 in credits in the case mentioned above, will that still be declared as income in their books, considering that it was actually “paid” for by the load buyer but was never used? Moreover, is it legal for telcos to indefinitely hold on to VAT paid by prepaid and postpaid subscribers in advance?

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