Dear The Real Singapore,
I would like to warn everybody, whenever you cross the Singapore border, remember that you may incur a data roaming charge, even if you disable your data roaming. Please see the reply from SingTel below:
Hi,
In response to your queries:
1. As an EasyData Roam (EDR) customer, the system will auto activate the DataRoam Saver (daily) plan of operator dependent when roaming usage is detected overseas.
However, should you prefer to de-activate Easy Data Roam (EDR), customer would have to email corporate support team prior to each trip for activation of data roam plan and mobile queries.
2. On your concern of disable of roaming data, we wish to inform that due to high technology on Smartphone, some mobile phones may still incur data roaming usage even if user have turned Data Roaming OFF on their phone settings. Smartphones are always searching for data connection despite data roaming being disabled and this may cause data leakage and trigger data roaming usage however little it may be. This is very much device dependent which we do not have much control over it.
User may incurred data roaming usage that comes in small amounts of data packets (ie. 10KB dataroam usage blocks) although with Data Roaming disabled on their device (EDR activating DRS daily plan or PPU usage). This is due to some Smartphones that have apps running in the background or push notifications/emails on. Dataroaming usage are charged by per 10KB blocks whereby local data charges are charged by per 100KB blocks. You may wish to know that actually with 10KB, users would be able to send whatsapp messages and receiving an email.
Please see attached usage. Sorry that we are not able to justify for waiver.
My concern is when we signed a contact, the so-called customer service personal did not mention anything about the EDR, and we need to pay the data charges we actually did not use at all. From SingTel’s reply say that for the 10KB block, I can send/receive Whatsapp or email, but in actual fact I did not use all those services at all, for my case I ended up paying $120 for something that I did not utilize at all.
Desmond
TRS reader
http://therealsingapore.com/content/dear-trs-please-warn-your-readers-about-daylight-robbery-singtel