About the author
I've been a customer of SingTel and SingNet since the beginning. I bought their SingNet internet services when it came out around 1995. The following is the story of what I've observed for the SingTel/SingNet PC Show 2014 campaign.
Over the past 2 weeks, I've received 2 direct email offers from SingTel/SingNet, offering exclusive offers for their fibre internet service. If I wanted to subscribe, I need to call the number indicated in their mailer. When I called up the number, no one knew about the offers. How many staff did I speak to, to come to such a conclusion? At least 5 staff, including one manager. Based on the responses I got, SingTel runs a very messy and uncoordinated company.
In the latest offer I received (valid only from 5 to 8 Jun 2014, and it was sent to at least 2 customers, including me), after discounting 3 free months, the average monthly price for 200Mbps is $34.95. When I called to enquire about the offer, the staff immediately denied such an offer is available. And on Facebook, one SingTel staff immediately called it a scam (see above). When I proved that the email came from SingTel's IP address, and SingTel's marketing address, he immediately turned around and said it was a mistake on his part to call it a scam, and "there was an error in the email we sent to customers".
Let's guess how many persons it takes to design an email campaign. 1 person to design the image. 1 person to send out the email to targeted customers. 1 person to put it up on their web site. 1 person to approve the campaign. A total of 4 persons. Did all 4 persons make a mistake for a campaign that lasted only 4 days?
Unless such an email campaign was designed, approved, placed on the website and sent by just 1 person, it takes between 2-4 persons at least to design /approve /send out the campaign, and put it up on their own website.
One staff said all customer reps are aware of all SingTel campaigns but all the staff I spoke to wasn't aware of the campaigns I talked about.
SingTel is not a small company. If a mistake was made, why wasn't there subsequent mailers sent to the target audience to explain that it was an error? Why weren't there a corrected image placed on the web page? No such emails were ever received.
At the time of writing this posting (8 Jun 2014), the same image still remain on their website.
In fact, I received plenty of calls from SingTel to offer me the 200Mbps, free for 7 months, 24-month contract, for a monthly average of $35.35, slightly higher than the price of $34.95. As a principled person, I rejected the offer because it is not what was stated in the campaign.
Is SingTel a company that makes plenty of mistakes? Or is SingTel a company that uses questionable tactics? Or is SingTel a company that has staff playing musical chairs on campaigns? I leave the questions for you to ponder.
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