A Service Provider to My Service Provider

Every now and then, and through nobody's fault of course, the roles get reversed and I end up providing services to my service provider. I'm not complaining, just saying that it's about time I got paid for my services.

Take the bank for example. Every now and then, I'll get a call on my mobile phone, and some young bright-voiced person will ask me to sign up for their funds transfer facility at a very special interest rate just for this 6-month period. Like 1.88% per annum or something ridiculously low. All I need to do is sign on a fax. And fax it back. They'll even fill up the form for me, and very neatly too.

Have had a couple of cash crunches in the past 2 years, and I've actually accepted their rather special offer.

A few months later, it's another officer on the phone. The voice is not so bright-sounding. In fact, it is rather stern. You have not paid your instalment! Ok. How much is it? They give me a rather huge number. I'm not a math genius, but that doesn't sound like what I expected. Can I check what interest rate they applied?

15%.
What is this 15%? What happened to my promotional rate?
They don't know what I'm talking about. What is this promotional rate?
10 minutes later, and after much panicked sifting through documents in my personal file (by me), they suddenly get a clue. Oh yes. There was a promotional rate that applied to me. So the instalment is actually much much less.

I switched banks after that incident. Try to cheat people?! I'll show you!

And then the second bank did exactly the same thing to me! Given that there are only 3 local banks in Singapore now, I have only 1 option left, and I don't think too highly of my chances.

My take on it is that the average employee in the "special offers" department is about 12 years old. This is why, after they hang up the phone on me and get my fax, they cannot remember to key in the details. Who is in charge of keeping the credit control department in the loop? That would be me.

Same thing today for a telecommunications service provider. I tried to terminate one of their services. Fill up a form on the web page, they said. Give us 30 days, they said. Why? I wanted to ask. Is your server in Tuvalu? Do you need time to travel there and disconnect my account? After we filled up the form, I got 2 more emails. Fill up this form. Fill up that form. Give us 30 days from the date of the second form to deactivate.

Finally wrote back and told them to pay me for my time. Reminded them that if they had to sue me for these payments, they wouldn't need to get these forms filled - they'd just use the particulars ON THEIR DATABASE. I've so had it.