To LBC or not to LBC
And that is the question. You be the judge.
Here’s our experience.
My sis in California sent a few hundred dollars to help my mom pay for her hefty hospital bills she incurred when we rushed her to the emergency room at FEU Hospital (Fairview). We told my sis not to send via Western Union becoz I often hear people complain about their high service fees. So I told my sis to try LBC instead. I think it was a bad suggestion on my part.
I still have to ask my sis when exactly she sent the money but when we were on the phone with her, she said my bro-in-law was going to go to LBC on the same day to have the money sent. 2 to 3 days later, an LBC messenger came knocking on our door AT NIGHT!
Two things I didn’t like about that:
1. It took LBC 2 to 3 days to deliver the money. I still have to verify this from my sister.
2. They came at night with a big bundle of money. HELLO! What’s wrong with this picture??? They could have called us or given us a notification letter informing us that the money was already available for pickup at their offices/branches.
I also told them they can just hand over the money to me and I’d count it right there at the gate, without letting them in. However, they insisted on coming in for their protection, in case some criminal tries to grab the money from them. My response was, "I don’t know who you are and for all I know you could be some holduppers trying to stick us up. Sorry to say that but I’m here to protect my mom and you sure don’t look like some neighbors I know." They were equally apologetic as well but I’m the type of person who gets a little paranoid when it comes to complete strangers. It’s hard to persuade me with sweet words. No sirree, BOB. Unfortunately, they would not release the money unless they come in. My best move was to just check for both their IDs and then try to remember their names, just in case (as if fake IDs are not easily gotten here - silly me). But under the circumstances, it was the best effort I could have done. Boy, no offense LBC, but your two delivery guys did look like they were up to no good.
But going back to my story, to make the story short, I let them into our yard, which made us very vulnerable & made me very nervous, and then they released the money to us.
And to our surprise, the money sent by my sis, in US currency, was now converted to Philippine PESOS. With all the negatives in this experience with LBC, this unexpected development just took the cake. The LBC dudes had the hard time figuring out how much money were sent to us in their original currency becoz the money was already converted to pesos. Needless to say, me and my mom were pi$sed. And to cap this train wreck, the conversion rate was much lower than what we could have gotten if we were allowed to have the money changed to pesos by ourselves. The whole experience was just a confluence of blunders.
So if you have family or relatives abroad and they are thinking of sending you some of their hard-earned ca$h, do them a favor by referring them to these two articles (one of them is a list of options) for different options of sending money to the Philippines. They’ll be glad you did:
Reader Comments on ‘Sending Money to the Philippines’
http://tinyurl.com/2knvwe
How to send money to the Philippines
http://eofw.edongskey.com/how-tos/how-to-send-money-to-the-philippines/
If you’re not satisfied with the two articles above, just remember Google is your friend.
As for LBC, let me assure their management that my displeasure with their service would not encourage me to use them ever again unless some corrections are made. A simple change they should do is allow their clients to pick up the money at their office instead of delivering it. The security risks involved with doing that is enormous. Also, by so doing, they can save some money on manpower and gas, and they can, in turn, pass on the savings to their customers. Another suggestion is to not deliver the money at night. How stupid can that be???!!!! Thirdly, and most important of all, do not have the money changed to our local currency, unless this has something to do with our local laws. Otherwise, that is beyond pale.
