Since my family’s broadband and mobile plans had been out of contract for quite some time, we thought it might be a good idea to take up one of Singtel’s latest offering – the mio plan which promises more bang for buck. Guess we were wrong. mio is the abbreviated form of more-in-one truly lives up to its name, that referring to the problems that comes along with it.
Through intensive advertising, Singtel boasts about the convenience, benefits and cost-savings that its brainchild can provide to its users. But what we have experienced is a different story altogether. The nightmare started the night before the technician was due to carry out the installation of the mio box. It was more like the Pandora’s box which opened up to a whole lot of trouble.
Incident numero uno. In the notification letter that we had received, it clearly stated that there would only be a loss in Internet connection from 8am to 12pm on the day of installation. However, this would not the case as Singtel conveniently decided to cut us off from cyberspace the night before because they thought that nobody should need the Internet after midnight. Like that would ever happen.
Other than that ‘unfortunate’ hiccup, the installation went smoothly and we were quickly back online. But Murphy’s Law tells us that everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Unexpectedly, the connection went dead a couple of days later. Thinking that it might be a loose cable, we tried every means to get the connection back up. No luck.
After hours of trial-and-error troubleshooting, we decided that enough is enough. We pick up the phone to try to make a call to Singtel techical helpdesk. But the phone was dead. The dialtone was there but we couldn’t make or receive any calls. Tough luck. Thankfully, someone invented the mobile phone. A quick call to the helpdesk proved useless as the guy at the other end of the line couldn’t help much except inform me that I wasn’t connected to the Internet. Wasn’t that obvious in the first place when I told him I couldn’t get a connection?
We had to resort to calling the contractor who performed the installation for us to drop by our place to investigate the problem. So, after several rounds of blame-shifting and threats to take legal action against them, they finally relent and sent someone over. Half an hour later, they pinpointed the problem to faulty wiring at the exchange and fixed it. Mind you that we’ve been without a connection for half a day by then. Of course, no charges were levied. But the reluctance of both companies to bear responsibility really ires me.
So far, we haven’t encounter any further incidents yet and I hope it stays this way. But these incidents have already left a bitter aftertaste and led to a loss in confidence and trust from the average consumer in a reputable multinational company like Singtel. They certainly need to pull up their socks and restore the customer’s faith in their services, especially that of a loyal one.