Exchange of Letters with M1 Regarding PPUR

Here is the series of letters I exchanged with M1. My comments are in bold italics.

This was sent through their M1 Customer Feedback Website.

Original Message Follows:
------------------------
Name : Mr.Tan Raymond
M1 Number : Not a M1 Customer
Date: 30 December 2004

Comments:
Firstly, I apologise if this complaint sounds harsh. I am merely presenting facts, and I hope you take this as constructive feedback.

SingTel has long had their "Pay As You Roam" service, in which no registration fees and no monthly subscription applies. You will just pay an extra 20% on top of the IDD rate.

So, when I went to Malaysia in June, when calling back during off-peak, I paid only S$0.48 per minute (S$0.96 per minute for peak) when calling back to Singapore from Malaysia.

I was looking at M1's new "Pay Per Use Roaming" (just introduced this month) which is basically the same idea as SingTel's PAUR. However, it seems to me that their charges are ridiculous. For calling to Singapore from Malaysia, they charge S$1.50 per minute (both off-peak and peak it seems), not including the foreign operator's local airtime charge. That is ridiculously expensive. How do you hope to compete with SingTel like that? Not only do you introduce the service late (it's just introduced this month), but you charge much higher (3 times higher than SingTel's off-peak rate).

Both SingTel and StarHub allows anyone with Internet access to send an SMS to any SingTel or StarHub user. This is a totally free service.

M1 however, charges a ridiculous 10.5 cents per SMS for the M1 recipient. It's true that you can find other ways to send a free SMS to an M1 customer. But why does M1 have such a strange pricing policy that is so different from the other two?

With the price plans between SingTel and M1 being more or less comparable, the above puts M1 at a great disadvantage. It's for these reasons, that I'm glad I switched over from M1 to SingTel some time back.

In case M1 has the habit of ignoring complaints or giving wishy-washy responses or responses that avoid the points brought up above, I will let my 600 plus students know this coming semester (I teach undergraduates in NUS) of why they should give M1 a miss, based on such simple cold hard facts. I am sure M1 would not like any negative publicity.

I get the usual unsatisfactory response two working days later. Who wants to pay to send SMS? At least the response was prompt.

Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2005 14:58:43 +0800 (SGT)
From: Customer Service - M1 <cussvc@m1.com.sg>
To: Raymond Tan
Subject: Feedback on Charges

CMT/INT/0501/529765/AK

Dear Mr Tan

Thank you for your e-mail dated 30 December 2004.

Mr Tan, we note your concern with regard to our current Pay Per Use Roaming (PPUR) rates. Please allow us to clarify that PPUR is cater for infrequent or leisure travellers who make occasional calls to Singapore and need to receive calls when overseas. While we acknowledge your feedback on the higher tariff rates as compared to Auto Roaming rates, PPUR enables this group of customers to roam without having to pay Auto Roaming registration and subscription fees.

Please be assured that we have also noted your feedback on Internet SMS charges. You may wish to note that we have an online SMS service-Group SMS, where M1 customers can send SMS to one or a maximum of 30 recipients at once. The recipients can be local or foreign mobile users. However, the sender of the SMS will be charged 5.25 cents (with GST) per local SMS per person or offset against the number of free SMS in the monthly bill if it is within the free monthly bundled. For SMS sent to foreign numbers via Group SMS, the charge will be 15 cents (not applicable to GST) per SMS per person. This charge is not part of the free monthly SMS.

We seek your understanding that each operator has its own set of offering which we are unable to comment on. However, we thank you for sharing your feedback with us and we assure you that it will be part of our considerations for future changes to our current tariffs. It is definitely our aim to address our customers? needs as much as possible and to strive to satisfy all our customers.

If you have other queries, please contact our 24-hour Customer Service Hotline at 1627 (+65 96801627). Alternatively, you may send us your query/ feedback via the link below.

http://csfeedback.m1.com.sg/jsp/email.jsp

Yours sincerely
MobileOne Ltd

Angelia Kay
Customer Relations
For more information, please refer to www.m1.com.sg

I'm trying to get the main point across. Maybe the information was too much for them to handle.

Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2005 15:16:34 +0800 (GMT-8)
From: Raymond Tan
To: Customer Service - M1 <cussvc@m1.com.sg>
Subject: Re: Feedback on Charges

Dear Angelia,

Thank you for your response.

Let me try again: you say that "PPUR is to cater for infrequent or leisure travellers who make occasional calls to Singapore and need to receive calls when overseas". Interestingly, SingTel's PAUR (Pay As You Roam) service is for the exact same purpose; it also has no registration fee and no subscription fee.

So why is there such a huge difference in price between equivalent services by M1 and SingTel?

Summary: Call from Malaysia to Singapore:

SingTel's PAUR: $0.48 / min (off-peak) or $0.96 / min (peak) M1's PPUR: $1.50 / min (not inclusive of local operator's airtime charges, total is likely to be about $2.00 / min)

So M1 is effectly charging 2 or 4 times SingTel's rate. Why the difference, M1?

Sure, M1 is "unable to comment" on other operator's offering simply because M1's own offering is so poor. Else they would surely point out why their own offering (M1's) is better. This probably ranks as one of the worst responses ever. The only redeeming point is that they are rather prompt in replying.

Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 14:27:11 +0800 (SGT)
From: Customer Service - M1 <cussvc@m1.com.sg>
To: Raymond Tan
Subject: Feedback Pay Per Use Roaming

CMT/INT/0501/533782/AK

Dear Mr Tan

Thank you for your e-mail dated 5 January 2005.

Mr Tan, once again, we appreciate the time taken to share your concern on our Pay Per Use Roaming (PPUR) rates. We would like to reiterate that each operator has its own set of offering which we are unable to comment on.

Please do not reply to this e-mail as e-mails sent directly to our mailbox will not be responded to with immediate effect. If you have other queries, please contact our 24-hour Customer Service Hotline at 1627 (+65 96801627). Alternatively, you may send us your query/ feedback via the link below.

http://csfeedback.m1.com.sg/jsp/email.jsp

Yours sincerely
MobileOne Ltd

Angelia Kay
Customer Relations
For more information, please refer to www.m1.com.sg

It's time to go for the local newspaper.

Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 23:10:01 +0800 (GMT-8)
From: Raymond Tan
To: stforum@sph.com.sg
Subject: M1's PPUR is four times more expensive than SingTel's PAUR

Dear Editor,

I appreciate if you find my letter suitable for publication in your Forum page.

Regards,
Raymond.

========================================================================
M1 introduced a new Pay Per Use Roaming (PPUR) service to their customers in December 2004. This allows all customers who do not travel frequently and who do not subscribe to autoroaming to make and receive calls whilst travelling overseas. The target group is for their customers who do not travel regularly.

SingTel has a similar existing service called Pay-As-You-Roam (PAUR) which targets the same group of customers.

Both value-added services from both companies do not charge any subscription or registration fees.

It is interesting to note that their airtime charges are very different.

SingTel charges an additional 20 percent surcharge on all roaming charges. A SingTel customer on PAUR calling back from Malaysia during off-peak hours pays $0.48 per minute.

M1 charges $1.50 per minute (a flat rate for both off-peak and peak times). This does not include the foreign operator's local airtime charge. So a M1 customer on PPUR calling back from Malaysia during off-peak hours pays about $2.00 per minute.

The math is easy; 30 minutes of off-peak talk time calling back from Malaysia will cost $14.40 on SingTel's PAUR and approximately $60 on M1's PPUR.

Thus, M1 charges are about four times more expensive than SingTel's charges. Why are M1's charges significantly higher than SingTel's charges, especially when for most other plans and services, the two mobile operators charge approximately the same price?

Another way to see it is this: M1 Autoroam customers have to pay $20 for registration and $10 monthly subscription.

On a short trip to Malaysia, if my PPUR charges exceed $30, it means an M1 customer should not use PPUR and should just stick with Autoroam.

At $1.50 per minute, it only takes 20 minutes of talk time for PPUR charges to hit $30. So PPUR is worth it only for customers who will use less than 20 minutes of talktime; surely a small amount of time especially when calling back to loved ones.

I hope M1 can give us a better answer than the response "We seek your understanding that each operator has its own set of offering which we are unable to comment on" that I received through e-mail after my feedback to them.

Discerning M1 customers may wish to switch operators or just avoid PPUR altogether.

Interesting. I get the second response from my e-mail dated 5 January 2005, two days after I sent my e-mail to the Straits Times Forum (which never got published). Coincidence? Or M1 has friends in the Straits Times? You decide. Anyway it says the same thing, but at least this time they acknowledge that they are more expensive then SingTel. But so far nothing has changed on M1's side. You can make a difference. If enough M1 customers voice out their displeasure, things may change.

Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 17:32:57 +0800 (SGT)
From: Customer Service - M1 <cussvc@m1.com.sg>
To: Raymond Tan
Subject: Feedback on PPUR Charges

EMT/INT/0501/533777/CS

Dear Mr Tan

Thank you for your e-mail dated 5 January 2005.

Mr Tan, we note of your feedback on our PPUR charges and do understand your point of view. While we are not able to comment on the pricing strategy of other service providers, we assure you that we will continuously review our charges to remain competitive in the telecommunication industry.

Your feedback will definitely assist us in our aim for improvement. Should there be any changes in future, it will definitely be communicated to customers.

Please do not reply to this e-mail as e-mails sent directly to our mailbox will not be responded to with immediate effect. If you have other queries, please contact our 24-hour Customer Service Hotline at 1627 (+65 96801627). Alternatively, you may send us your query/ feedback via the link below.

http://csfeedback.m1.com.sg/jsp/email.jsp

Yours sincerely
MobileOne Ltd

Clarissa Sia
Customer Relations
For more information, please refer to www.m1.com.sg

I finally got a nicely worded and probably generic reply from the Straits Times Forum.

Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 17:04:02 +0800
From: STForum <stforum@sph.com.sg>
To: Raymond Tan
Subject: Re: M1's PPUR is four times more expensive than SingTel's PAUR

Thank you for writing to us. We do appreciate your making the effort.

We receive 70 letters on average each day. Limited space means we can publish only about a dozen every weekday. This means having to make often difficult editorial judgments on which letters to publish.

We regret we are unable this time to publish your letter, and hope you will appreciate the constraints on space we face every day.

We hope you will continue taking an interest in the Forum Page.

Yours sincerely

Ms Noor Aiza
for Forum Editor
The Straits Times