Think all price plans and value added services are created equal? Don't bother to check your phone bill carefully? Well think again! You may be wasting your hard-earned money when there are cheaper alternatives elsewhere!
See for yourself:
Both value-added services from both companies do not charge any subscription or registration fees.
It is interesting to note that their airtime charges are very different.
SingTel charges an additional 20 percent surcharge on all roaming charges. A SingTel customer on PAUR calling back from Malaysia during off-peak hours pays $0.48 per minute or $0.96 per minute during peak hours.
M1 charges $1.50 per minute (a flat rate for both off-peak and peak times). This does not include the foreign operator's local airtime charge. So a M1 customer on PPUR calling back from Malaysia during off-peak hours pays about $2.00 per minute.
Even M1 knows that its charges are not competitive. See the advertisement on Page 7 of The Straits Times on Thursday February 3, 2005. Notice that they did not even mention the roaming charges on the advertisement, since they want to get M1 users to use PPUR first and then find out later how expensive their roaming charges are. If their roaming charges were competitive, they would surely have placed their roaming charges in the advertisement.
See for yourself:
The math is easy; 30 minutes of off-peak talk time calling back from Malaysia will cost $14.40 on SingTel's PAUR and approximately $60 on M1's PPUR.
Actual bills can be found here for you to make your own comparisons:
From the highlights:
Thus, M1 charges are between two to four times more expensive than SingTel's charges. Why are M1's charges significantly higher than SingTel's charges, especially when for most other plans and services, the two mobile operators charge approximately the same price? Not only that, but M1's PPUR was introduced far later than SingTel's PAUR. Usually the new kid on the block will try to have prices that are comparable or lower than the existing offering. Not M1.
Another way to see it is this: M1 Autoroam customers have to pay $20 for registration and $10 monthly subscription.
On a short trip to Malaysia, if an M1 customer's PPUR charges exceed $30, it means that he / she should not use PPUR and should just stick with Autoroam.
At $1.50 per minute, it only takes 20 minutes of talk time for PPUR charges to hit $30. So PPUR is worth it only for customers who will use less than 20 minutes of talktime; surely a small amount of time especially when calling back to loved ones.
It seems like M1 is just trying to make a quick buck from M1 customers who do not have the time to look at the nitty gritty details of their price plans and value added services.
Discerning M1 customers may wish to switch operators or just avoid PPUR altogether.
Interested to see the letters I exchanged with M1 concerning this? Click HERE.
M1 however, charges a ridiculous 10.5 cents per SMS for the M1 recipient. It's true that you can find other ways to send a free SMS to an M1 customer. But why does M1 have such a strange pricing policy that is so different from the other two?
See for yourself:
See for yourself:
See for yourself:
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