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Singtel pisses off PR executive; fellow IT journalists and PR chips in

Singtel chose to piss off the wrong public relations executive and it resulted in IT journalists and public relations community rallying behind her against Singtel.

Bridget Kow, Account Executive at The Hoffman Agency, wrote on Singtel Facebook Wall about being wrongly charged on mobile data downloaded when she was overseas. Bridget thought that her loyalty to Singtel would mean something and Singtel would consider defraying this cost. However, her loyalty meant nothing to the telco.

Wrote Bridget.

"My bill for this month was SGD$340 dollars from the usual SGD$65 I regularly pay. After over ten years of loyalty, regular bill payments and good service, I was stunned to discover today that your organisation had taken the liberty of charging me an additional SGD$200 for 10MB of data while I was out of country.

How is it considered “goodwill” when I still have to pay 1 day Dataroam package at $15/day instead of $200 dollars for 10 mb....

..Instead of punishing a loyal customer for that mistake."

This resulted in comments from various IT journalists and public relations professionals to like and comment on Singtel lack of "goodwill to loyal customers".

CNET Asia's senior writer, Aloysius Low started the ball rolling by pretending to be a Singtel customer rep and mocking their mobile data service.

Wrote Aloysius,

"Thank you for your feedback. We will definitely continue to improve our services. We will try our best to address your concerns. Do give us a chance. The link can only be accessed by laptops/desktop. Please fill up your details and we will get in touch with you."

David Cheng, editor at HardwareMag, commented, "Oh Singtel. How you suck donkey balls."

Shawn Balakrishnan, Account Director at The Hoffman Agency, reminded Singtel of the importance of loyalty as he wrote, "Sigh, classic poor form by Singtel. I am sure they could acknowledge a genuine mistake and do better in the customer engagement department. After ten years of loyalty, its not altogether wrong to secure further loyalty with a little more understanding."

Surely Singtel PR team should be involved now rather their customer reps.

Comments

Anonymous said…
uh! Doesnt make sense.... So, Miss Bridget went oversea and use 10MB of data without signing up dataroaming plan. She is charged the published rates and she lodge a complaint to SingTel. Since she is a loyal customer for 10 years, SingTel reduce her $200 bill to $15 out of goodwill.

Can someone explain to me what did SingTel do wrong?
Anonymous said…
I wonder if the Hoffman Agency also doesn't charge their loyal customers for their services.
Anonymous said…
The girl is wrong in the first place. Singtel waived $185 instead of the full $200. Instead of being thankful, she go create trouble on the company's Facebook page and get her journalist friends to join in? Very classy.....
Anonymous said…
I'm not sure I understand. You used the data, incurred the charges (which usage and charges are also imposed by the overseas operators by the way if you have done your investigations), got a $185 bill waiver, and still complain?

Shame on you.

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