THEY'RE RUNNING A SCAM AT GSIS

At best, GSIS can be accused of false advertising. At worst, it is running a scam.

Our father has finally received his eCard in the mail after months of waiting - a wait that started with a hellish experience at the start of the enrollment process to obtain the card at the Philippine Consulate General in New York City last March 9 (see the earliest post in this blog for a full picture of that chaotic and bizarre bureaurcratic f---up)).

As instructed, our father dutifully filled out the UnionBank card that accompanied his eCard with his specimen signature and eCard information and mailed it back to the GSIS. However, since his birth month is in August, which is just a few days away, he followed the advice of the Consulate to have it validated in August. This will save him an extra trip. GSIS requires that pensioners have their card validated once it arrives and then to have it validated annually during their birth month. Going to the Consulate in August just makes perfect sense.


But here comes a letter from the GSIS asking him to activate his UionBank account by calling a toll-free 800 number. After trying to call for hours and getting a busy signal each time, he called up his phone company and sought their help in dialing the supposedly toll-free number.

And guess what? The phone company said he had to call a special number where he found out that the toll-free call was not free at all. It required him to cough up close to $8 to make the call.

GSIS should not advertise this number as toll-free when it is not. Our guess is that it has entered into an agreement with a phone company to extract charges. Whatever it is, GSIS should clearly spell this out in its mailings.

It was their failure to communicate in the first place that got them into trouble with the eCard.

The GSIS media office has a tendency to exaggerate and, as a result, ends up churning out propaganda and confusing people.

Some news reports have indicated that Winston Garcia spends oodles of money for propaganda purposes, besting all other government agencies.

But for such an enormous amount of pensioners' money spent on prettifying his image, how come they cannot get their facts straight?