SMART International Roaming Deposit AKA RIPOFF
I had recently changed my service plan from 1200 to 500 [last April] because I had a SUN 350 line and I wanted to lower my monthly expenses. When I was getting this done I expressly asked the service rep about roaming. Fact of the matter is I was only keeping SMART because SUN had weak to zero coverage outside Metro Manila and because I assumed SMART [being bigger and older] had more roaming partners over SUN. When I went on my 4 day trip to China last week, roaming was not working. Good thing I had brought my SUN SIM card which did roam successfully take note my SUN plan is only 350/month. That is even lower than my SMART plan. So I decided to call SMART and have roaming activated on my SIM. I was surprised when the rep on the phone said that activating roaming now required a 2500PhP roaming deposit and that this deposit can only be credited to your account as bills payment when you decide to deactivate roaming. I asked if this deposit would be used if I roamed and she said no. I argu...