PCCW just called and told me that they will not be charging me the $1800+ for the international roaming. They will just be charging me the $338 that I expected to pay when I signed up for the service.

Is it just coincidence that I got the phone call telling me that I was right and they were wrong less than two hours after sending them an email telling them that I had reported this to the OFTA?

Well, not entirely. Their suggestion was that instead of paying a pro-rated amount of $119 for October 30 to November 9, they would charge me $338 for that period and give me a full 20 megabytes. But that since I had also used the service on November 10th, they would charge me an additional $338 for service from November 10 to December 9th.

Hold on, wait a minute. I said to the guy, you check my records, you will see that I only used the service from November 2 to November 10. My expectation is to only be charged for one month and have all other charges waived.

To which he responded, interestingly enough, if we agree to this, will you drop your complaint with OFTA? And yes, I told him I would.

So that means there’s at least one government department in Hong Kong that actually has some teeth?

It also shows how unethical they are – because if they were in the right and I was in the wrong on this, they would have insisted that I owe what they said I owe. They would have charged my credit card, been less amenable in their emails, canceled my service plan.

How sustainable is a corporate model in which profits are based, at least in part, in overcharging customers and hoping that they either don’t notice or are too busy to deal with trying to get things put right?

Because I suspect that in many cases, people would go, “Oh, $1500 overcharge, it’s not worth the time and trouble to get this set right.” But in my case, I’m unemployed. Which not only means that the $1,500 means a lot to me, it also means, as Orquestra Was once sang, “I ain’t got nothin’ but time.”

(BTW, Orquestra Was, a fabulous one-off album from Don Was of Was (Not Was). Most of the songs by Hank Williams, with a roster of guests that included Terence Blanchard, Sheila E, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Kramer, Merle Haggard – and an accompanying film produced by Francis Ford Coppola with Kris Kristofferson. The 13 minute centerpiece, “Lost on the River,” just fabulous stuff.)

Hongkie Town
Share