Hidden Cost

MY wife has been using postpaid line for more than four years now. She signed contract with one of leading telecom boys. It was nothing wrong until last few months. We notices that her monthly bills has accelerated despite she use as normal as before. The additional charge is named as data servicing charge and come expensive at $88.00. When search breakdown in the bill, there is nothing to proof it. First, we thought it is result of changing policy and will come once a year like that. But it keep coming the following months and we started to call hotline to seek clarification with the said charge. However, as usual, it is always busy and no answer. After several encounters, we decided to inform company through email and we got reply few days later.

The officer did explain that my wife is a user of value plan which is capped at less than $40.00. However, she has to pay extra if she surf internet. In fact, my wife never used internet with mobile. The officer continue that the customer may notice 3G or GPRS icons in the top of mobile screen when he/she is using internet. What we don't understand is we never switched to internet button. The officer said, the handset might have automatically turn from wi-fi to 3G service where wifi service is out of courage. The real thing is she still working at the same company, living in same apartment, working in same places, going only downtown area. How come her mobile went out of wifi area? If her mobile needed to turn 3G, she should have been notified/ received SMS for changing as it come no free. As a basis user, we notice 3G icon but we don't aware of extra charge. We thought that if we don't use it, we don't have to pay. But the bill upset us and it lead us to complain to the service provider.

Finally, the officer advised us to terminate the data service in order to avoid unnecessary charge in future bills. However, she insisted that the extra charges shown in bill has to be paid and remain payable. Meanwhile, she offer to waive if we terminate service. We, almost immediately, agree with her to terminate the service since we never used that. We got another lesson to be learned which come a bit costly. As a prepaid card user, I have no reason to worry about such incident. Sometime it is safer to be conservative. May be I am wrong.