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Apr 16, 2010
TRAVEL AND TELCOS
Clients need better rights
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MORE should be done to protect consumer rights in travel and telco services.
Consumers must place a deposit when booking tours. But customers bear the burden when travel agencies cancel tours because of a lack of clients.
My tour was cancelled three weeks before peak season. By then, it was too late to book similar packages elsewhere because they were fully booked.
Left with little choice, we settled for a tour to a different destination offered by the same agency. We had placed our deposits two months before the tour.
When we questioned the fairness of cancelling our tours so near peak season, the reply was that agencies reserved the right to cancel a tour at even shorter notice.
We were told it was standard industry practice.
So, while consumers must honour their bookings or forfeit their deposits, agencies do not face any penalty or loss for cancelling a tour.
This lopsided situation can be found with telco services too.
For instance, while I accept that consumers must pay hefty penalties for breaking a contract with SingTel's mio TV service, SingTel escapes responsibility when there are service disruptions.
I cite mio TV because service breakdowns are frequent and resolving problems squanders precious time. Since this is pay TV, consumers should be entitled to compensation.
SingTel suffers no consequences even when there are major disruptions; consumers receive neither a rebate nor even official notice of disruptions.
What mechanisms are in place to ensure that pay-TV operators keep to a minimum standard in the areas of service and equipment (decoder box) reliability?
The authorities should look into the issue, and return to consumers our basic rights - stopping the current one-sided situation where contract terms put us on the losing end as paying customers.
Service providers should be made to bear more responsibility when they fail to provide us with the service we pay for.
Currently, TV on demand does not equate to content any time I want it. Now that SingTel has English Premier League broadcast rights, the backlash will only be on a larger scale should such a disruption happen during matches. I wonder how fans will react when service staff ask them to wait a full 30 minutes for a restart of the decoder box.
Jason Ong
TRAVEL AND TELCOS
Clients need better rights
<!-- by line --><!-- end by line -->
<!-- end left side bar --><!-- story content : start -->
MORE should be done to protect consumer rights in travel and telco services.
Consumers must place a deposit when booking tours. But customers bear the burden when travel agencies cancel tours because of a lack of clients.
My tour was cancelled three weeks before peak season. By then, it was too late to book similar packages elsewhere because they were fully booked.
Left with little choice, we settled for a tour to a different destination offered by the same agency. We had placed our deposits two months before the tour.
When we questioned the fairness of cancelling our tours so near peak season, the reply was that agencies reserved the right to cancel a tour at even shorter notice.
We were told it was standard industry practice.
So, while consumers must honour their bookings or forfeit their deposits, agencies do not face any penalty or loss for cancelling a tour.
This lopsided situation can be found with telco services too.
For instance, while I accept that consumers must pay hefty penalties for breaking a contract with SingTel's mio TV service, SingTel escapes responsibility when there are service disruptions.
I cite mio TV because service breakdowns are frequent and resolving problems squanders precious time. Since this is pay TV, consumers should be entitled to compensation.
SingTel suffers no consequences even when there are major disruptions; consumers receive neither a rebate nor even official notice of disruptions.
What mechanisms are in place to ensure that pay-TV operators keep to a minimum standard in the areas of service and equipment (decoder box) reliability?
The authorities should look into the issue, and return to consumers our basic rights - stopping the current one-sided situation where contract terms put us on the losing end as paying customers.
Service providers should be made to bear more responsibility when they fail to provide us with the service we pay for.
Currently, TV on demand does not equate to content any time I want it. Now that SingTel has English Premier League broadcast rights, the backlash will only be on a larger scale should such a disruption happen during matches. I wonder how fans will react when service staff ask them to wait a full 30 minutes for a restart of the decoder box.
Jason Ong
