There Cannot Be More Fines, We Are Not A Country of Fines

 

Count them if you can pay them.

 

There is a better alternative to getting the products and services these days that makes everything equal and goes above the reality of being  "consumer-deprived" or devoid of essentials for household and life-survival. 

In all the things we spend for, we have always had a leeway to choose whether we pay via cash, credit card, or installment basis.

The old way of purchasing things which is slowly becoming outdated is to pay for items and services in cash. Because not many can afford to retain credit cards, cash reigns supreme in the great economy where every consumer must be favored and taken care of. 

But in a dismal economy fraught with new hopeful developments, one showing a bearish attitude towards the simplest of buyers, the best deal option is to use e-wallets, hence the popularity of digital money.

E-wallets are convenient when the pandemic waved its feel on the populace wanting to veer away from face-to-face contact either in small stores or in commercial establishments. Another wise option for the regular shopper is to rely on digital wallets that offer installments, making purchases affordable that have been toned down in mini-proportions.

This mode of paying in "pea-sized amounts" offers a problem solved on the pain point of a regular consumer. 

However, even as modes of payments now are more technology-driven and trend-inspired, what service and product providers fail to take note of, is to remove another pain in the throat of ordinary consumers—that of paying penalties, fines, or hidden charges to ensure continuity of services and assure of continued supply of consumer products.  

Let us not deviate from the usual spends of the ordinary Filipino.  

Utilities that require its subscribers to settle fines or penalties in varied amounts.  Reconnection fees can fetch as high as low as Php 600.00, to Php 1,500 depending on a company's requisites.

Meanwhile, as for the micro-loan consumers, the fees and penalties are not as definite and can be as flexible depending on which one has offered a micro-loan product.  This can be as low as Php 50.00, for ordinary micro-loan amounts, depending on the delay or schedule in settling the payments and the interest/s dictated by the principal amount.

In tax settlements, the penalties can be even more astounding and might range from Php 300 to less than Php 2,000 per month. In vehicle registration, penalties can also be charged against the owner of a vehicle. 

In the timeline of the pandemic, everyone is expected to make ends meet and keep the odds at bay when it comes to paying obligations. By consumers' standards, the current cost of living "is already high" in the country, at a time when jobs are scarce offline and online, and product availability can also prove to be scarce or limited.

An example analogy of how penalties could be used for another purpose by the consumers, instead of having the penalties paid, and thus make way for more  items on an ordinary mom's grocery bag is below:  

Example: 

 

• A PHP 50.00 penalty charged by a microloan can suffice to cover the allowance of a grade-schooler or pay for a cup of munggo beans, or a kilo of rice, enough to cover a day’s meal for a family.

• The PHP 300 penalty can afford a consumer 6 kilos of rice enough to augment a week's sustenance for an ordinary household.

• The Php 600 penalties slapped by another utility company can be enough to pay for the water service consumption of a city-dweller subscriber, for about a month.

• A Php 1,200 penalty charged by another lifestyle-essential utility company can be enough to pay for the transportation of a schooler for two weeks or more, should an ordinary consumer/s be freed from paying it.

These simple comparisons of how consumers can make better use of the penalties they pay, in order to procure products and services, must be understood in clear and simple terms by the company or business that charges these penalties.

If a subscriber/consumer moves heaven and earth to be able to pay or afford local products and services that are requisites for their own standards of living, why deny the consumer the opportunity to be free from paying such fines when these would mean a heartbeat of a meal; an extra mile of reach to a destination; or an extra day of guaranteed meal for a schooler?

Fines are as debilitating as the obligations of debt that ordinary consumers shoulder in their own blindsighted ways to follow a structure of fines dictated by the businesses they rely and trust on.

 

 News Review Philippines

2023

Posted in real-time by the writer, Anna Liza VB.

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