Tale of two telcos

It's been four years since I last posted. I am at it again as I find that life as a senior can be pretty frustrating, to say the least.

There are so many more challenges.  Especially when organisations, both public and private, that we older folks have to deal with, do not fully realised that this group of people are now slower, less alert and mobile, hard of hearing and often blurry-eyed.

We know there will be many more of us in the coming years as the authorities keep reiterating this fact to raise awareness.

So, what I do not understand is, why are those people involved in serving this group of seniors not give more thought on how to ease the problems facing them?

I know I've been slow in raising this. But two recent incidents involving telcos got me upset again.

One concerns telco Singtel.  Two latest bills -- me and my wife's -- have charges that do not seem right.

So I tried calling Singtel to find out the reason. And that was when the frustrations started. Press this number and that number but all I heard was a recorded voice.

 At that stage, one couldn't help but wonder whether the telco was trying to avoid talking to the customer at all costs.

Then I decided I should call a different number. It worked. There was a human at the other end!!! Turned out to be a business line. Hmmm, made me wonder even more.

I managed to speak to J. Long story short, he said he would try to get the charge for my wife's "usage" waived and call me back.

Guess what? He never did.

This morning (Aug 22), wiser and with another bill in hand, I called another business line. Spoke to a woman who put me through to a customer service officer named Devi.

Even though I had to wait more than 10 minutes, I was glad I didn't have to go through the pressing-buttons routine again.

Devi was very understanding when I told her about my problems -- and frustrations.

She said my wife's non-usage charge had been waived. She did the same for mine. Happy ending!

The second incident involved Starhub. It was easier to speak to a human in this case, but he was a call centre person who spoke with an accent that was hard to comprehend.

Here, the frustrations were numerous, arising from my decision to upgrade my cable TV plan.

1.  Starhub billing  is totally confusing. If I had not called to query and verify, I wouldn't have known what the charges were for.

2. The various sections apparently did not know what each one of them was doing. A charge that was already waived was still in the bill I received. A Starhub woman had called earlier to confirm.

3. The call centre person was hesistant and had diffculty answering my queries. He had to excuse himself three times to check and check.

4. The telco has a serious communication problem among themselves and with its customers,  both orally and in writing.

The customer service officer says someone will call me in 24 hours to explain. So it is still a running story.

Stay tuned.

y