Pizza Anyone?

[Dave H]

It's a good thing that I paid cash for all of my pizzas...and everything else!

Pizza party in the Philippines? Get ready to sell a kidney!

Bruce Watson
Sep 17th 2008 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Debt, Food, Travel

Historically, the Philippines has been known for its beautiful beaches, World War II history, extremely friendly citizens (they celebrate the Fourth of July under the guise of "Filipino/American Friendship Day), and Imelda Marcos' extensive shoe collection. Recently, however, it gained a new distinction: it is now home to the most expensive pizzas in the world.

The Heigh family, of Alberta, Canada, was instrumental in helping the Philippines reach this achievement. While traveling there in late August, the Heighs became homesick for good, old American cuisine and decided to visit Pizza Hut. Over the course of two visits, they bought a pair of pizzas, enjoyed their cheese and greasy dough fix, and gave the leftovers to beggars. Unfortunately, their restaurant processed the transaction in dollars, not Filipino pesos, which means that the two pizzas came to a total of over $2,500. MasterCard immediately froze their account and began investigating the charges.

Now, three weeks after the original transaction, the Heighs still haven't been able to get one of the charges reversed. This exchange has cost them a great deal of time and forced them to cancel a side trip that they had planned on making. As Shannon Heigh notes in her blog, when traveling abroad, make sure that stores accept "international credit cards." If you don't, you just might get your pizza with a big side order of misery!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. He swears that he will never complain about Totonno's $20 pies again.

 http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2008/09/17/pizza-party-in-the-philippines-get-ready-to-sell-a-kidney/



 
 
 
   

 

[Dave H]

Pizza party in the Philippines (UPDATE)

Posted by Shannon in Shannon's Posts

Thank you to Dale B for commenting on our pizza story… the comment you left was automatically emailed to me… informing us that a AOL blogger (Bruce Watson) had written about our ‘Pizza Saga’. We just checked our stat counter and are SHOCKED at the number of people who have linked to our blog in the last few hours. I assume that by the time I am done writing this, the number will be over 1000! 

I would like everyone to know, that BDO (Banco De Oro) is the bank that Pizza hut deals with in the Philippines. They apparently had a ‘flaw’ in their system on August 17th and 18th. This ‘flaw’ converted all Philippine pesos into American funds. BDO DID reverse the charge of 900+ pesos immediately. it was the charge of 1600+ that was not reversed right away. I called both BDO and Mastercard countless times and everyone was very polite. BDO informed me that the amount was reversed… but it wasn’t showing on my statement. Upon calling mastercard, they kept informing me over and over that they had not received the reversal. Thinking that I was going to be stuck with a 1600.00 USD pizza bill, I was ticked. So, I emailed Global TV’s troubleshooter. Before the story even aired, A mastercard (manager?) called me and explained the problem. They HAD received the reversal. I don’t know for how long. I assume for awhile. When they had tried to “post the reversal”, they used the wrong code or something and it didn’t go through and it was left. Why I don’t know. Why they didn’t inform me of this or try again the many times I called I also don’t know. What I do know, is it took ONE call from a news reporter and it was done immediately.

I would now like to take a moment to respond to some comments that Bruce Watson’s readers left under his blog. I assume that most who left negative replies regarding the Filipino people, have never been there. We have never encountered such kind, caring, genuine people as we did on our trip there. We were treated like royalty, greeted with smiles, and always had people willing to help wherever we went. They are not crooks. They are not theives. They are not rats. They are a society full of people that we would be very proud to call our friends. We were extremely fourtunate to have had the opportunity to have gone there.

The mastercard incident did not ruin our time there. We had many opportunities to explore places such as Corrigedor Island, Pagsanjan falls, and Taal Volcano. We experienced dinner cruises off Manila Bay, Museums, Markets and really, really, really, REALLY cheap beer! (My husband made me write that  )

http://www.heigh.ca/