COL’s website is down and inaccessible since maybe just before 1 PM today May 25. I only checked again at 1:30sh and that’s when the site is no longer reachable. So far it’s already 2:57 PM, a few minutes more and the market will close, and the website of COL Financial is still down as of writing this.
I am not severely affected with this downtime since early this morning when accessed was still possible, I was already resigned that I’ll not be doing any buying or selling orders for the day. Well, I no longer have funds to spend anyhow. Lol.
But I am pretty sure there are others who are greatly affected by this, especially those who are active traders using the COL Financials stock trading platform. There are probably missed opportunities today during the downtime period.
I first thought my internet connection was acting up and to blamed for me not being able to access COL’s website. So I requested a friend to try to see if COL’s site loads for her, it was negative. So my next step was to check Facebook page of COL Financial to see if there are similar experiences and true enough, there are now several comments about the website down status.
Some of the feedback / complaints left on COL’s FB page worried me a bit, this person said “Hindi makabenta dahil down nnaman kau. Paulit ulit nalang”. Another one says “Sira na nman po yung website nyo. Paalala lang baka di nyo pa po kasi alam.”. While another one made his annoyance known “Kanina pa ko nagtry magbukas wala talaga! papalitan nyo ba ang perang mawawala sa amin?”.
Update: I have taken a screenshot of some of the complaints posted on COL’s lates post. I just checked again their page, and well, some comments have been deleted or hidden. So either the comment poster deleted his or her comment (which I believe is unlikely), or there is a COL FB page admin who took time to delete some of the complaints.
Since it is within the right of the admins of a FB page to only allow comments that they like and to delete/hide any comment they don’t ‘feel’, my question becomes if it is not the comment poster who deleted their own comment, and if it is an FB page admin, if this is so why then the page admin didn’t respond to any of the legit queries? Or at least make an announcement explaining the situation?
I really, really hope this is not a usual occurrence. A bit bum right now especially I can’t find any customer service rep explaining on the Facebook page what is happening, what is the estimated duration of downtime, what will happen next, etc. Facebook is the easiest way to reach and interact with customers, that’s why brands and companies set-up FB pages.
Good customer service requires a company to be there always for customers, especially when may palpak na nangyari.
As a website owner myself, down sites are to be avoided at all cost. Or if it’s down there is a need to take immediate action to bring the site back up. Or at least have the customer service team respond to valid customer queries, to alleviate fear and for assurance that the company is on top of the problem and is working on resolving the issue asap.
This is especially applicable in the case of COL, theirs is a stock trading platform, it involves money, real money. There are a lot of members – stakeholders who are affected with if the website is down and inaccessible.
UPDATE SITE IS UP: I’ve just checked again 3:11 PM and site is back up. Market is still open for a few more minutes. I hope those active traders still made some successful and profitable trades within the remaining minutes.
Finally, COL Financial have announced on their FB page about the downtime. See below.
One weird thing is that the ‘announcement’ is “46 minutes ago (it’s now 3:28 PM). Since 1:30 PM I have been monitoring their FB page, I have scrolled until their May 18 postings and haven’t seen any announcement then. I have taken screenshots as well during my scrolling. This is also why comments by members have not appeared on this announcement post until “just now” because announcement post is only visible now too. LOL. Oh well.
So it looks like members using Globe as ISP were still able to access their site okay. PLDT, SUN, and overseas internet users were affected. Given reason for ‘down website’: Third party internet provider experiencing technical difficulties.
*You can no longer find this comment by Jorrel on this announcement 😀
Tomorrow’s another day! Sana wala ng issue ulit. 🙂
For those who wants to reach out to COL Financial for any issue or queries or concern, you can call them at this telephone number (02) 636-5411 local 182.