Hi BPI Express Online team.
I’ve been having a really difficult time enrolling my EFPS with you guys properly.
First off, I’m not naive when it comes to these things since I’m in the internet marketing business and studied IT in DLSU. Granted, I’m also not the best of the best with online banking as you guys mostly use outdated systems that I’m not familiar with.
My problem with your system is really simple: I wasn’t given proper instruction on how to use your payment gateway – and your system had no instructions whatsoever either. All it had was this:
So I went ahead and put in my complete name as the advice of my accountant (but he was wrong).
Then I was advised the next day (again by my accountant) that what I was supposed to put in was my TIN number. Okay big mistake on my end.
However when I was looking for a way to ‘undo’ this, there was none. Frustrated, I called your hotline and had to wait (duh) a good number of minutes before someone picked up. That’s fine, we’re used to that in the Philippines.
The thing I didn’t like was that the agent who answered my call asked me to call a number for my specific issue – I didn’t know what the number was for or what team would answer. The agent just said to call there and tell anyone who picked up these words: “Nakapag file na ng request through EFPS website to make payment however the express online did not accept.”
What did it not accept? I have no idea.
But no matter. I called anyway. Someone picked up after five tries from my end. She was grumpy so I had to tell her that I was getting passed around by your call center.
After I told her the magic line of “Nakapag file na ng request through EFPS website to make payment however the express online did not accept.” She decided to pass me over to another person. She didn’t give me any number. She just connected me and said “to look for Neri or Alma” which I so gleefully did.
I thought I was getting to a solution.
So Neri answered the phone. I relayed my problem to her, and it just so happened that she had no idea about my problem so she passed me over to Alma.
Again, I thought I was nearing the solution. I told my story over to Alma (note that this is the fourth time I’m relaying my entire story again – wasting an hour of my time and as a businessman, time is very important to me).
Alma was polite until the point that she realized it wasn’t her problem. She blamed the BPI Express Online system (which I think is really the root of the problem) so I asked “Aren’t you from BPI?”
Nope.
She was a person in the Las Pinas BIR office. Hilarious.
Long story short, Alma hung up because it really wasn’t her problem (thanks Alma!) and I was disheartened to go through Round 2 of waiting, getting passed around and wasting some more time in my very busy schedule.
So what did I do? I consulted with my accountant on what to do. And it just so happens that he’s also getting exasperated on the back-and-forth of things and we’re going to get penalized for the BIR’s requirement of the use of the EFPS system.
I guess this is a blog entry about my frustration. But really, I think there are more people out there that have the same problem as I do. I hope you don’t experience getting passed around and finally end up in frustration like I did.
But really, this blog entry is something that I wrote so that the team at BPI Express Online would see it rank on the first page when people search for their website (because, hey, that’s what I do – I’m an SEO Specialist afterall) and check out my problem and finally give it some attention so I won’t be penalized further by the BIR.
If you’re reading this and you’re from BPI and you CAN fix my problem – please send me an email through my contact form here 🙂 I’d love to speak with you.
Thanks!