Feedback on the Telcos

COMMENT BY ROGER IN MY BLOG:

Many organisations have used this press button select options system for many years now. NTUC Income under your leadership was the very few organisations left to use real people to answer calls. Kudos to you.

Starhub's hotline is actually more user friendly and you can get to a courteous operator faster than Singtel.

The designers of these centres are usually technical people who are not able to put themselves into the shoes of the laymen. Also many staff nowadays use the automated system to ward off customers calls and put it into an endless loop where a sweet recorded voice kept telling you how important you are to the company and that you will be attended to shortly and it is actually a real test of patience as your phone bill goes up without any real purpose. So the phone companies get to benefit from these too.

There have been recently the hue and cry over Starhub's increase in fees and the contract that prevents people from cancelling their subscriptions.

Singtel also practices these unfair methods by a three year contract which does not reduce in price when a similar broadband service by the same company is now 20 dollars cheaper. Subscribers cannot cancel unless having to pay a hefty penalty fee but has to continue to pay the old higher subscription fees. How is it that when prices are raised then the contract is not binding in price but when prices are reduced it is binding?

We are now living in a society that cares only for more money, whether in cash or in kind, like all these automated answering services in the name of higher productivity but in actual fact just wants to save money by cutting down on the number of real people manning the phones to give real service.