Consumers’ wish list

You know it’s Christmas when traffic is even much worse than before (whereas it used to take you an hour to get to work from your house, it now takes you three hours on the road – you could have spent the time more productively at work or at home!). And the worst part is, there are no traffic policemen to untangle the bungled-up traffic. They seem to get scarce just when they’re most needed.

You know it’s Christmas when the garbage collectors in your neighborhood suddenly start coming more frequently than before, not so much to collect your garbage as to collect their pamasko. Of course, after Christmas, you don’t see them around as often. Now, that really stinks!

You know it’s Christmas when there are more snatchers and robbers on the prowl, more burglaries in the neighborhood than usual. We remember a friend’s house being burglarized just a week before Christmas many Christmases ago. The thief did his Christmas shopping under our friend’s Christmas tree, carting away all the nicely wrapped Christmas presents. Think of the sleepless nights our friend spent wrapping them up.

You know it’s Christmas when you suddenly get picture greeting cards from politicians (especially now that elections are just a year away).

You know it’s Christmas when you can’t get parking in most malls; the queues to the wash rooms are unbearably long, and it takes you a hour to get out of the mall.

You know it’s Christmas when it’s harder to get a cab than usual and when you do get one, the driver refuses to take you to your destination because there’s traffic there (hello, is there a place where there’s no traffic during the Christmas season?).

You know it’s Christmas when there are more street children knocking on your car window, but now, they’re singing Christmas carols.

You know it’s Christmas when you suddenly have more relatives and godchildren than you can remember.

You know it’s Christmas when you start getting fruitcakes (not that we mind, a lot of people actually love fruitcakes!).

You know it’s Christmas when there are tiangges everywhere, and everybody has something to sell.

So what do you want to find under the Christmas tree (if you have one) this Christmas eve?

Consumers share their assorted Christmas (screaming, not whispering) hopes and wishes:

• No more pesky credit card companies that charge you for unsolicited and never-activated credit cards. They’re a pain in the neck, whines Ateneo professor Carol Nuñez. "Standard & Chartered sent me a credit card last year, and keeps billing me even if I never activated it. I already complained to them last June when I received the first billing but recently, I received another one! Grrrr!"

• Sana di na uso ang gift-giving sa Pasko para hindi crowded ang shopping malls and streets.

• More e-commerce especially for typical household goods and school supplies, with free delivery in Metro Manila, of course!

• An alarm clock that plays classical music to wake you up.

• Limit the tiangge in Greenhills to once every quarter and only for a maximum of two weeks each. Pedestrians miss the space to walk on.

• More genuine vegetarian restaurants and organic markets in Quezon City.

• Another Starbucks branch in Quezon City, near the Ayala Heights and Filinvest/Batasan area, so pleads Starbucks hound Marc de la Cruz. "Hello, Tantocos, don’t make me drive all the way to Katipunan or West Avenue to get my non-fat Cafe Mocha Grande!"

• For government to control the awesome flood of smuggled goods that sell so cheap they are killing local manufacturers.

• A real, honest-to-goodness nationwide campaign against intellectual piracy, says De la Cruz. "The government and law enforcement agencies claim they are cracking down on this menace, but how do you explain the fact that a lot of pirated goods are displayed and readily available in the biggest malls and arcades in the country?"

• More world-class and popular brands to be made available to Filipinos. De la Cruz, however, stresses: "It may not be good for local businessmen who may be edged out because of cost and the Pinoys’ predilection for imported goods. But hey, there are many Filipino companies who have managed to stay competitive vis-a-vis their foreign rivals. Look at Bench and Jollibee! I think the Filipino can!"

• For local food producers to clearly indicate the expiry dates on the labels of their products.

• For cheaper diaper and infant formula, so a lot of mothers hope and pray for.

• A special line in drugstores for the discount card-bearing senior citizens. It’s pathetic to see the elderly wait in line for hours just to avail themselves of a measly discount.

• For National Book Store to put up a branch of Powerbooks (Makati style) in the UP-Ateneo area, so goes the ardent wish of some Ateneo students and professors.

• Air-conditioned coaches on the LRT.

• For politicians to stop thinking about the elections and focus on the economy to halt the slide of the peso so prices would not soar further.

• No smoking in public utility vehicles (PUVs) – and in the malls, too!

• That defective goods can be returned on a no-guestions-asked basis within a month after purchase so long as there’s a receipt, so Cynthia Evidente of Globe Telecom sends this message.

• That security would invest in bomb detection equipment, hindi patpat lang, laments one newshen.

• For a truly foolproof way for airport authorities to separate the terrorist from the plain tourist so that the latter would not have to go through the trauma of being subjected to all those security checks as if he were a hardened criminal. That way, flying would not be more scary than it is already.

• That the LTO (Land Transportion Office) at the Mandaluyong municipal compound would shape up. At peak hours, you could fry in the stuffy and very narrow corridors just waiting for your name to be called. There are a couple of ceiling fans but nobody’s turning them on. If we may add, we wish the procedure for renewing one driver’s license were shorter. A few weeks ago, when we renewed ours, we had to line up at so many windows and had to stand for hours in the hallway waiting for our names to be called each time, we could very well have blended with the walls.

And the list goes on and on.

Notwithstanding all this, we wish you a very merry Christmas!