It Pays To Stay With The Leader

Some of you may know that I used to be a M1 mobile phone user, if you guys have known me for about 4 years. I used to have 3 lines with them, 1 for myself, 1 for my brother and 1 for ex-tenant. About 4 years ago, I terminated the 2 lines progressively with them after 8 years with them. The reason, their funny billing system. Imagine yourself being billed $120 each month when you know that you have used only about 150 mins of talktime. That's was close to $1 per min. It was a big shock to me as I always had to call them to argue with them over my bill. The bill will drop for about one or two months before its back to the "level that I know I will never reach".  That prompted me to take Jason's advice to switch to Singtel as he had told me that Singtel was significantly cheaper. Since then, my bill has never hit beyond $55. It is usually $35 or below. I am also rewarded with loyalty discounts, handphone upgrades, together with my residential line and Singnet Broadband.

Today, I decided to pop down to the Customer Service Office of M1 at Paragon Shopping Centre as I have not received my refund from them after receiving my final statement from them last month. I felt that it was ridiculous for a listed  teleco to withhold my refund, which was less than $10 for about a month. The fact that my tenant actually left for his hometown 3 months ago meant that the line was not even in use. Yet these people, claims that its their company policy to do the refund after  " the 2nd final bill", which means I had to wait for 2 months for my refund if I had not gone down today and demanded to be paid immediately. I was so angry that I requested to see the customer service manager on the spot. I told her that her company billing system has been a bane, and it was making my blood boil. I told them that Singtel was able to do refunds within 2 weeks, therefore I was surprised why they can't.

In the end, I managed to get my money back. My parting shot was, " the company billing system should be further improved. Customers are not supposed to go down to the customer service centre after a month just to collect a refund that is less than $10."

This experience further underlines the point that I was right to make the switch 4 years ago. Even though, there was a service hiccup in my Mio TV installation recently, I am glad that the technical staff and customer service were able to resolve it quickly.

The moral of the story, " It pays to stay with the leader"