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Globe Telecoms's IMEVRYWHR had a lot of hype -- KC Concepcion smiled at us thru the ads, and newspapers & its online counterparts where blasted with the most glowing press releases about its launch & Globe's partnership with Fastmobile.
And they got the spelling right: it's not IM Everywhere, it's IMEVRYWHR! Forget the fact that cellphones have degraded all written communication skills in the country -- they're sticking with it. In all caps.
Weeks after its launch, notice how very little information you can get from actual users of IMEVRYWHR. That's not the norm for a community which practically sleeps with their mobile phones, and I decided to check it out.
I have tried accessing IMEVRYWHR with 2 SIM cards -- a postpaid and a prepaid line. I didn't get much luck on the postpaid line. It kept on giving an error that my mobile has been previously registered in MyGlobe, & that I must use the same username.
Of all the mental retardation in the telco industry, this is probably one of the biggest -- they actually want me to publicize the same username that can access my billing account? And, if a teenager uses a phone which is under the name of his mom (which is common over here, by the way), they actually expect that guy to use his mom's username & password?
Kailangan pa bang i-memorize yan?
Two things are wrong here: First, the cellphone number is actually tied to one, and only one, account. You can't use another SIM & expect to keep your identity. Lost your prepaid SIM? Tough luck.
Second, they had the intelligent idea to tie it up with MyGlobe, the crappiest website in telco history. It took me 15 minutes of fidgeting around the website, just to figure out how I can retrieve my darn username & password. Until I was told that I can conveniently retrieve my username & password by calling the customer hotline.
But I persisted on ... I wanted an account. I was able to get hold of a brand new prepaid SIM. Nothing like a clean slate, huh?
I was oh-so-wrong.
The new APNs that Globe sent right before Christmas didn't work. But I didn't spend all those years doing QA for nothing: I tried it out with all possible APNs (im.globe.com.ph, internet.globe.com.ph, www.globe.com.ph, etc), removed the proxy settings, used both prepaid and postpaid SIMs, etc.
The error messages just became more creative: connection error with globe.fastmobile.com, connection to proxy server failed, gateway timeout, etc.
Finally, I realized how stupid I was to actually believe that P20.00 of unlimited use is actually a good thing. Heck, I spend less than that using IM+, Agile, or YB -- and they can all connect to Yahoo & MSN.
[Uninstall]
So, does IMEVRYWHR really work? Maybe it does. I probably will never know.
I do know one thing: Telcos over here has a habit of launching half-baked products. Forget repeat customers: They have a quota to meet, and they don't know of any other way except by launching something new. It's an endless let's-launch-and-forget-maintenance game.
A little bird told me that the product was indeed rushed -- because Globe received a rumor that Smart was coming up with its own IM service. Did fear of competition throw all common sense out the windows of Globe Telecom?
Pick it up, Globe. It's probably still along Pioneer street.
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