Philippine court death sentence for BPO
By Juan Dela Cruz

The guillotine finally fell on the Epixtar call center last month as a local court has denied its petition for to continue operating in the Philippines through its proposed “rehabilitation plan”.  Epixtar was accused of falsifying sales figures in India in 2003.

According to the Regional Trial Courts decision, the proposal of Epixtar to temporarily halt or stagger debt payments to its creditors does not make sense due to unclear business plans and targets presented. The court of Judge Reynaldo Daway has found no merit to the presented platform that will facilitate timely payments to its creditors. Judge Daway added that it denied the proposed arrangement to protect business interests of the creditors involved. Epixtar had already filed a similar petition back in late 2005 to suspend its payments until 2007 which was graciously allowed by the presiding court. This time was the second attempt to suspend its payments.

For our Indian friends, some of you may remember Epixtar as the call center company that suspended its outbound sales operations after they found irregularities in sales numbers in its three of out of seven call centers they operated in India back in 2003. When Epixtar started in the Philippines sometime in 2003, the future seemed to look very bright. Their management made sure that Epixtar would look good to both clients and the Filipino populace by showing unprecedented growth through acquisition of sites and aggressive hiring of employees. Unfortunately, business did not come through to support the growth and pay for millions of dollars borrowed through several financial institutions. Their mother company could not support the local operations because it also filed bankruptcy in the U.S.

In my personal knowledge, there were more stories behind the pitiful ending of this company. Even in the year of its inception, there were already rumors of Epixtar shutting down. The company faced several lawsuits for violating consumer protection laws in the U.S. while the Philippine management here were hiring a lot of people and putting them to position without any real job description. The agents who worked here thought they were being trained to scam customers into agreeing to a sale which turned-off a lot of employees and eventually resulted into a huge turnover rate. Epixtar is now the poster boy for mismanagement and failure for the Philippine BPO industry. All BPO’s should learn a lesson in Epixtar heartbreaking demise.