Saturday, October 18, 2008

Fine Singtel

I am rather disappointed by Singtel’s efficiency in slapping late payment fines of $0.50 lately.

Sometimes when I am just behind a month’s payment due date, I would receive a reminder, and my next bill will have an additional $0.50 postage and handling charge for their reminder.

This has occurred several times.

I am a long time subscriber of Singtel services which include landline, broadband before replacing my pager and dial up services.

I also subscribe to Starhub and M1 services. However, I have never received fines from them for being late in payments. Starhub would send me a letter telling me that they understand my busy schedule and are gracious to wait patiently for my next payment.

Of course sometimes I take advantage of that and accumulate months of bills before paying all at one go.

I think it is a nice gesture to allow subscribers more time to pay. Slapping fines to increase revenue and shareholder value is a penny cheapskate, pounds idiotic strategy.

I will be renting the new hubstation to utilise the free internet when my broadband contract for Singtel ends this Dec. After all, it only costs an additional $4/month on top of the usual digital set up box subscription. I get to “watch, surf and play” as well.

Of course, I will be terminating my landline as well.

There will be a $30 monthly savings on my telecommunications costs.

To Singtel:

Nevermind I did not qualify for the red rewards points as my bills do not amount to $100 per month.

Nevermind I did not redeem a single free gift from since 1996 while M1 and Starhub has given me countless movie tickets and Caller ID waivers.

Nevermind I stayed as a loyal customer all these years and never default on any payments.

Nevermind your hotlines are always busy and customer service tellers are often hard to reach.

Nevermind your efficiency in slapping postage and handling fees on us.

Nevermind you lose a customer like me.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

another angry singtel customer:
http://felixker.com/that-sucks/singtels-mobile-broadband-is-really-very-lousy/

Anonymous said...

I thought most people will link their singtel/starhub bills to credit card and earn credit card points

You go so much money how come not paying your bills on time?

Sgbluechip said...

Hi Marvin, linking bills to credit cards will give the billers too much liberty to charge you. In the event of any dispute, you are at their mercy as the bill has already been charge to your credit card.

You certainly cannot request the bank to revoke the billing.

If you have read the papers today, some fitness centre automatically renew the membership fees upon expiry.

You will have a lot of hassel if you decide to change credit cards.

And to clarify, I do not have a lot of money. Most of my free cash are invested. I work 16 hours days and paying bills on time are often the last priority on my list.

Hence, I appreciate accumulated bills without penalty.

Besides, even multi-billion corporations practice accrued payments.

Cyberguy007 said...

Hi, I totally agreed with your termination of Singtel services. I was also a Singtel customer for coming 10 years. And have been on their 2nd highest plan for 6 years, instead of getting free vouchers for upgrading of phones(like what M1 have always been doing) I get fines and reminder letters like u did! Though a current plan was still within the 24mths cycle, I decided to terminate it early and save it for other Telcos. The penalty fee maybe high, but i still save more than paying till the plan ends.

la papillion said...

Hi,

Hey, so what is the best telco to stick with? I was planning to run away from M1. They are okay, but I thought their plans are not as competitive as others. Starhub perhaps?

Sgbluechip said...

Hi CG, I understand your frustration here. I have asked many friends about Singtel service. Apparantly, they are losing quite a fair bit of retail market share to M1 and SH.

They failed to understand that once a customer moves over to a new telco, it means losing them for years, if not forever.

Sgbluechip said...

Hi LP, if you are looking on hp services only, M1 has the best service.

You can call and "threaten" to terminate contract. Usually you will be offered a new 2 year contract with a $200-$250 HP voucher to go with.

I have tried terminating before as I wanted to join starhub corporate plan. Guess what? They even offered to reduce my monthly subscription of $30 to $10 if I continue the same plan with them. No vouchers in addition though.

Not sure if SH submit to threats or gives free vouchers as I just switched over.

Starhub bundled services would be ideal and value for money if you are moving into a new house. Just buy the router (certain brands compatible only) and wait for the SH technician to install everything.

He will be very friendly and patient to teach you all the functions step by step.

passive incomer said...

i intend to change to hubstation bu ti would need to pay $17 because i already have the HD box (i paid for it).

Anyway, that would save me some $ because i can cancal the 2mbps surflite of S$29.

Check out http://my.ocworkbench.com/bbs

la papillion said...

Hi SBC,

Hmm, I did try the threaten trick. I was frustrated over something when I tried to switch plans within M1. That guy waived off a one time charge immediately.

Perhaps I should threaten them to give me some vouchers too, if not I'll switch to starhub. I really intend to, haha :)

nhyone said...

After paying bills manually for years, I now opt for either GIRO or credit card whenever possible.

Much less stress.

If you can put everything on one credit card, then you only need to monitor one account to make sure everything is okay.

Otherwise, you need to monitor one bank a/c and one CC a/c, which is still better than juggling several bills.

For me, I use GIRO rather than CC so that I only need to monitor one savings a/c. Simplicity is good.

Unknown said...

Hi, have same feeling about singtel service these days! We relocate our service to new home and with more than 3 days without phone and internet connection! Every time I call the service 1610, they always say the same thing:"our technical department will call you later". Then their technical guy will always ask me to check whether the connection is all right, or whether the power light is on ! So stupid and so inefficient. Singtel has a really horrible service organization. And I decided to subscribe the service although I have another year to go. Anyway, I definitely won't pay any penalty fee to them.