With currency and derivative gains, this year’s first quarter profit is 11 percent more than last year’s first quarter profit. PLDT’s consolidated revenues increased by 10 percent or P3 billion to P33 billion on higher profits from wireless and information communication technology. An estimated P280 million in PLDT core profit was lost as a result of the peso appreciation.

With all these net profits, it’s evident that PLDT is not in the red and I will then have the audacity to return the P100 useless public prepaid phone card I bought which PLDT is still marketing. As PLDT speedily sells these useless phone cards, they are as speedily removing the telephones these cards are intended for, replaced with coin phones.

I arrived at the NAIA in March after a long absence. With my cell at low-bat and with no coins, I searched around to buy a telephone card to call home. I didn’t get to call home because there were no telephones I could use the card with. All phones were for coins.

In the three months since, I have not found (at malls, schools, buildings) a PLDT public phone that will take the phone card I was sold at the airport. Apparently, chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan and/or CEO and president Napoleon L. Nazareno couldn’t bear to lose the added profits from selling these useless cards. PLDT won’t throw away these cards that would net PLDT P100 each when sold. That PLDT has already removed all the machines that these cards can be used is no concern for PLDT.

Since PLDT public phones have been changed to coins, isn’t it only decent and honest to pull out all these prepaid cards from the market?

So, then, after writing this piece, I shall put my P100 four-month-old, useless PLDT prepaid phone card in an envelope and mail it to Pangilinan and Nazareno’s office, to demand a refund of my P100. I am sure neither will quibble over my demand for a refund since P100 won’t put too much of a dent on Messrs. Pangilinan and Nazareno’s P40 billion profit squeezed out of tens of millions of telephone users like myself.

On the subject of PLDT public phones, I wonder if Pangilinan and Nazareno are aware that when they charge one peso coin per minute, that the minute is actually about 30 seconds in PLDT timer. I called a friend, and for that short time she needed to give me her cell phone number, the five peso coin I put in was used up.

I have lived on short and long terms in 30 different countries. The public phone systems in other countries do not treat consumers as deceptively as PLDT does.

***

Letter from a reader: "I’m Fr. Bob McConaghy of Greenbelt chapel (Philippines). I just want to make the point that the Catholic Church is opposed to spiritual chain letters, especially those that are rooted in the "gospel of prosperity" or God wants to make you rich and will do so if you forward such emails to 7, 12, 15 or as many names you have in your address book. It’s idolatrous baloney. It claims legitimate devotion to Jesus, Mary, and or saints and frightens people to believe that if they don’t send don’t send the letters something bad will happen to them.

"I beg you please not to spread these messages anymore. I’ve heard enough confessions in my 32 years to know how these letters fool and frighten people and give them a false image of Our Lady, not to mention that it encourages idolatry and a magical approach to religion. I am sure you were not aware of this and mean no ill will. There is no sin here on your part, you want good things for people and that is noble.

"In all humility I would ask you to forward this note to others. In Christ, Fr. Bob McConaghy (bobmcconaghy_1975@yahoo.com)"