Ka Edong Soriano mentioned that he remitted me money from Canada. This is what happened when I received it through G-Cash.
The first thing was that I didn’t get a notice when it was sent. I guess this is alright if you are expecting a remittance, or if you regularly check your balance. But a casual user like myself would not get an update, otherwise.
Next is I forgot my PIN for the BAL command. I only registered G-Cash a few weeks ago and have never used it. It was easy to forget my PIN. After three tries on my prepaid SIM, I got a message saying I had to call the hotline. I phoned in and they asked my name. I have Globe Handyphone postpaid accounts to my name, so to make sure the PIN was not sent to these, I had to explicitly remind her to send it to my prepaid number.
If I were just an anonymous prepaid user, what’s the use would of giving my name? And since I gave my prepaid number over the phone, and didn’t use other means of verifying it, what’s to stop me from resetting other prepaid users’ PINs?
I used the CHG command to change to an easy-to-remember PIN. The first thing I did to spend my 25 Canadian Dollars was to load my prepaid credit. Globe offers a 10% rebate if you load your phone using G-Cash. This makes sense, because you have to pay a fee to buy G-Cash using cash. In this case, since Ka Edong paid the fee in Canada, I got the 10% discount. Globe makes a profit here since the cash never left the Globe system.
I then made a transfer to another G-Cash user. This also does not leave the Globe system. In this case, I made a payment from an online seller. Ironically, this was on behalf of someone else who had a G-Cash account but damaged the SIM. Since the balance was only a few hundred, the account holder didn’t bother trying to retrieve the money.
The hassle is in cashing out, when the money leaves the Globe system. I had only PhP 135 left and I needed to experience an actual cashing out for this article. I went to what should be the easiest place to perform the transaction – a Globe Business Center. I went to SM Makati. Ironically, even while The Hub in Glorietta is the flagship Globe store, they do not perform G-Cash transactions there.
I went to the Business Center near closing time, 8:45PM. There were no other customers. I gave my Drivers’ License as an official ID. They needed to keep a photocopy. I filled out the cash out form.
The Frontliner didn’t tell me that I would receive a SMS to confirm. I didn’t mind my phone in my pocket. So the frontliner asked me a little bit later. By that time, it was too late and she had to send it again.
I received the message saying the transaction has timed out. Then after 5 minutes or so, I received the “please enter MPIN” message coming from 2882+reference number. I replied with my MPIN.
I signed the receipt. I had to pay PhP10 for the cash-out fee, so I got a net of PhP125. They did not have change so they asked for PhP25, and gave me PhP150. I thought I also heard a comment that I was cashing out “only” PhP135.
From this little experience I think that Globe wants to keep the money inside the G-Cash system and not convert it to real cash. Does verifying my identity and signing forms actually help with anything? Perhaps someone could narrate their experience with G-Cash fraud.