Merlion City

Dear Sirs,

I have sent numerous brickbats to Singtel over the past month because of misrepresentation and lousy service given by Singtel staff. I am glad to say that I can finally send an email to Singtel, to compliment one of your staff.

Two nights ago, a friend of mine sent 2 MMS to me but I never received them. Out of the blue, I received 2 SMS from Singtel tonight saying that there are 2 MMS waiting for me at the IDEAS website and they were the 2 MMS that my friend sent 2 nights ago.

I called Singtel 1626 and spoke to a Prakesh (I did not not quite catch his name though I did record our conversation) and he was not helpful at all. He suggested that the reason for my not receiving the MMS was because my phone settings were wrong. But this was not possible because I have been receiving and sending MMS the past month since getting my phone. He then suggested that perhaps the MMS my friend sent was bigger than 6M and hence my phone was unable to receive them.

After getting off the line with Prakesh, I checked with my friend and she said that the MMS she sent to me was only 26KB. This was verified when I logged into the IDEAS website and saw that the picture she sent was approximately 27KB.

I then called 1626 again and spoke to a lady called Vijay. Vijay said that she would do a line reset and asked me to power off and on my phone in 2 mins, after which, I was to send a test MMS to myself. I told Vijay that I would do as instructed but I rejected the idea of sending a test MMS to myself. Why should I pay for a test MMS if this was a Singtel problem? Vijay said that this was a very common problem with MMS users and that the fault lies with my handphone.

This was illogical to me because if the fault was with my handphone, then how does Singtel resetting the line help my handphone? Anyway, I requested that Vijay send a test MMS to me again and she agreed to do so. Thus I waited... I waited for 19min from 11:46pm to 12:05am and there still was no MMS.

So I called 1626 a third time. This time, I spoke to Gary Liew. At first, he also insisted that he could not send me any test MMS because there were "no phones allowed" in his office. I asked to speak to Vijay again and to my alarm, she had knocked off!! How could she be so irresponsible as to make an empty promise to a customer and then run off because her shift was over?? When I was working for a similar helpdesk, I always made sure that I followed-up with all outstanding customer requests before leaving the office!

Anyway, after much insistence on part, Gary still said that he could not send any MMS during his shift. I asked to speak to his supervisor, who was unfortunately on the phone. When his supervisor (Julia) did not return my call within 15min, Gary called me back to explain that she was still on the line but he got her permission to send a test MMS using my IDEAS web portal, and waive off the cost of that MMS.

And so the test MMS was finally sent, and I received it. What I want to highlight is that Gary's attitude was definitely positive. He did not show any signs of frustration at me, an irate customer, and he was responsible enough to follow up my request with his supervisor. So although I was very pissed by the first 2 CSOs I spoke to, I think Gary managed to resolve the issue and at least convert me to a happy customer once again.

Please send my thanks to Gary. Thank you.

Regards,