I would like to highlight a practice involving Singtel that I consider questionable.

A few months ago, I recontracted my home fibre broadband plan to take advantage of a discount offer.

I was informed by the customer service officer that this new plan included two "bonus items" called the Security Suite Plus ($9.25 a month) and the Qustodio Bundle ($2.80 a month).

However, both would be provided free of charge for three months, and I was instructed to call Singtel a few days before the offer's expiry date if I wanted to cancel them, or I would be required to pay the subscription fees. I explained that I did not want either service when I recontracted, but was told that they could not be excluded from the plan.

A week before the expiry date, I received two SMSes from Singtel, asking me to reply "Yes" if I wanted to continue with these services.

I did not respond, assuming that they would be automatically cancelled.

To my surprise, when I reviewed my latest bill, both items were listed. I contacted Singtel over this and the customer service officer had to manually submit a request to remove them.

I would like Singtel to explain why it gives its customers contradictory instructions, resulting in confusion and a waste of time and effort to correct an error that should not have occurred in the first place.

While the fee amounts are considered small, even if only 100,000 subscribers recontracted, that adds up to an extra $1.2 million in revenue a month if they fail to notice these services were not terminated.

These customers would essentially be paying for services they probably would not even use.

Oh Jen Jen (Dr)