BARELY a day after telco SingTel released its pricing plans for the much-anticipated iPhone 3G S, would-be customers ran into problems trying to pre-order the phone.
Many were unable to access the SingTel website for pre-orders for hours on end. When they managed to do so, there were other problems, such as being unable to pay with their credit cards.
Call the customer service hotline? Unreliable. Sometimes, calls could not be put through or went unanswered.
Contacted yesterday, SingTel apologised for the inconvenience. Its spokesman said the pre-order website had seen an "unprecedented number of orders since it went live on Monday evening". He declined to reveal the exact figure.
The company has since increased the capacity of the registration website to handle more traffic.
Marketing manager Daniel Chong told my paper he spent 12 hours trying to get onto the website and make a pre-order payment. All came to nought.
Mr Chong, 28, said: "The first time I called customer service, they said there was a problem with the account and reset my password. It didn't work. After two more calls I gave up and searched for help online."
He eventually reserved the phone yesterday morning.
The frustration has spilled online onto several forums like HardwareZone, while many others tweeted about it.
Netizen gongchen posted on HardwareZone on Monday: "I have been calling for the last 30 minutes. Finally they (SingTel) answered but they told me their system is down, and asked me to try again tomorrow morning."
Netizen deep3lue posted on the same forum yesterday morning: "If they (SingTel) want to do the registration online, make sure the system can support it."
Mr Chong agreed, saying: "SingTel should have anticipated the demand after all, similar problems happened when they launched the 3G last year."
No comments:
Post a Comment