I'll give credit to Unionbank to where it's due. They did a really good job.

For context, my relationship with UBP isn’t pretty, despite using a lot of their services. I left their savings account ages ago for example due to frustration for their support but got reeled back in due to the Citibank PH acquisition, so I'm still active as a result, but only with credit cards.

In fact, I even recalled my incident with them last year where the support call took 36 minutes. It was awful. I was furious to the point that I had to report the incident to BSP (a formal complaint!) just to get their shit sorted. They addressed it.

Last week, I was pleasantly surprised. I had to make a support call and it was actually quick and painless. The phone navigation was actually decent and was in less than a handful of taps, got routed to a support agent in probably just a minute or so, and I actually got my concern resolved in less than a banking day (their SLA was 24h).

11m looks like it’s a while but this is with an active discussion with the agent and them trying to figure out to sort my concern. And they did!

Very good.

In contrast, I was trying to help my mom's problem with BPI and already lost my patience just trying to navigate through the annoying hotline, droning on and on about tips and shit instead of just telling what to press and what to do next.

This part btw, is something that utility hotlines should stop doing here. The customer is calling your hotline for a particular problem. They don't need reminders to use the app or do certain features, etc. What they want is resolutions to their issues. I hate it when I have to wait a minute or so just to be reminded of the same shit they send in email or text when I just need to know what to press next to proceed.

I realized that the Unionbank hotline sorted this out, or at least improved it since the last time I used it.

Good on them.