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Friday, March 07, 2008

How Old Should You Be...

to get your own cell phone bill? Well here in Singapore I guess it really doesn't matter. When we got here almost 2 years ago we got daughter no. 2 a cell phone. The phone was in hubbies name. Well recently Singtel came out with a new Student Plan that has free unlimited SMS (text messaging - but daughter no. 2 says it stands for "secretly messaging someone"). Standing in line at the Singtel store is like watching paint dry while having to listen to screaming cats. It's that enjoyable. I was trying to get wireless broadband for my laptop and on trip number two up to the Singtel store to get the correct hardware I notice the new Student Plan promotion. I thought, "great, I'll sign daughter no. 2 up for the new plan so we will no longer have to pay for her to send secret messages." Wrong. Sales clerk (which I couldn't tell if it was a he or a she - just like a great majority of the people here - I swear I do not know if the person that has been cutting my hair for the past almost 2 years is a guy or a girl!) anyway...the sales clerk looks up the account and says I have to come back with my daughter's School ID. Can't switch her plan without confirming that she is for sure a student. Ok. So I try to plan a day to take her up to the Singtel store with me. We want to go EARLY, so we are there when they open AT 11AM - not so early to us. Early here is 9AM. So this past Saturday we go up to the mall (yes - everything is in a mall) and when it is our turn we go to the sales clerk and tell him that we want to switch daugher no. 2 to the Student Plan. He looks up the account and asks if Mr. Robert is with us. I tell him, no, why? Well it seems that since the bill is in his name he has to be there to 'ok' the change. That was not a big deal as they said he could fax them his employment pass. However, now the sales clerk not only wants the student ID but also daughter no. 2's dependent pass. I told the guy, "look, the last time I was here I was told to bring her STUDENT ID, nothing was said about her DEPENDENT PASS. You know she has one, she couldn't be here in Singapore without one. Why do you need it?" He told me in order to put the account in her name they needed her dependent pass. I was like, "what?" "You're telling me you are going to move the account from her dad's name into her own name? She's 14 years old! Who then ultimately is responsible for paying the bill?" He looked at me kinda strange and more or less said that she would be responsible but that what ever we worked out at home was up to us!! Well needless to say, since we didn't have her passport or dependent pass with us we had to go home and come back later. Hubby went with us that time and we got it all taken care of. I still can't believe how backwards they are about some things. So now we have three cell phones, my wireless broadband and our home phone. Guess how many different bills we get each month? Yep, you got it! THREE (tricked ya - my phone and hubbies phone are paid for by our employers). Guess it's too difficult to combine all the numbers (daughter's cell, broadband and home phone) onto one statement.



Besides all of that excitement we had a whole other conversation about their phone prices, trade-in values, etc. What they offer is worthless! What we got back home with Verizon is much better.

4 comments:

TBM said...

Unfortunately I can totally relate. It took us one month to get cell phones when we moved to England. My husband got his first (he could only sign up for one). They told us we had to wait three months before they would even think about letting him have another line for me. I ended up getting my own contract and my daughter (then age 12, by the way) got a pay as you go. No family plan. No shared minutes. No free calling between phones. We went with T-Mobile because that's who we used back home. But T-Mobile here didn't care that we'd been a T-mobile customer in America for 1,000 gajillion years. We were brand new to them here.

Sigh.

OldHorsetailSnake said...

You mean you avoided being penalized for cancelling her first plan? If so, that would be a first.

Anonymous said...

Geez...talk about a mess of red tape!

Anonymous said...

if you are a foreigner aka alien in a country other your own, I think you should watch your attitude and respect how things are done in the country which u are just staying temporary. Stop acting clever and rude (not able to tell the locals gender for instance) note: honestly, I have no trouble differentiating red necks..
and maybe you might learn something new.
And of course, I am sure most of us are truly happy that foreign trash as yourself are no longer crawling amidst us. Amen.