Hate To Be Pushed Around

This post relates my friend’s nasty experience with M1 and how I had tried my best to help her to solve it. It was a nasty one, enough to make my friend decide to terminate her association with M1 when her contract expires in February.

My friend had signed up a Singtel line for her mum as her mum had some complaints about the M1 network recently and her mum’s contract with M1 had ended. Since my friend is working with Singtel, she is able to enjoy a special staff price if she signed any Singtel handphone, fibre broadband & Mio TV plans. She took the phone that was tied with her mum’s new Singtel line, Samsung Galaxy SII LTE.

The phone & her SIM card had worked fine for a week before she had to begin to restart her handphone about 6 to 20 times each day. I even tried talking to her on the phone, but the call was distorted and dropped a few times. As I have been a Samsung Galaxy S2 user myself, and I did not encounter any problems, I was surprised when she told me that the M1 Customer Service told her this after changing the SIM Card when she complained of no network coverage.

• Change the normal SIM Card to a micro SIM.
• Update the phone’s firmware to the latest version

I agreed with the 2nd point, but not the first, as I know that the phone uses normal SIM for Galaxy S2 and the best part was M1 charges for the micro SIM at $18 and levies a $10 monthly charge, which I thought was ridiculous as Singtel does it for free.

I went with her to Samsung to update her phone’s firmware and asked the customer service to test it on other telcos’ SIM Card. I was surprised to discover that the M1 SIM card was surprisingly loose when it was fitted to the SIM Card holder but not with the rest. The test proved that my faith in Samsung products was right. There was nothing wrong with the phone.

Another trip was arranged to M1 Customer Service Centre, where my friend was clearly frustrated that she had to reset her phone many times at her office, before she could call out, receive call or surf the Internet.

I told the customer service officer that if the phone cannot receive its network, it is a useless piece of brick. The customer service officer who advised my friend to get a micro SIM should be better trained with product knowledge. The purpose of a phone, is to call out, receive call and surf for information when needed. If my friend gets trapped in an emergency and she cannot call out, who is responsible? Why is your SIM Card so loose compared to other telcos?

I tried to get a termination of the handphone line based on these reasons, but was not able to. I was able to achieve a $60 rebate for my friend spread over 6 months.

I hope IDA steps in to regulate this poor service provider soon. Friends who are holding M1 line, please note the above problems highlighted.