Just sharing another incident involving my Singtel line that I believe everyone should take caution on when travelling.
Recently I travelled to Taiwan. So just like everyone else, I've purchased a separate data-only travel eSIM plan for my travel mobile data needs. I don't intend to have any data roaming on my Singtel line (for obvious reasons).
On departure day, I activated my travel esim beforehand, turned on data roaming on phone setting, but also made sure to default mobile data to use this travel eSIM instead of Singtel SIM before reaching Taiwan so I won't incur any unnecessary, expensive data roaming charges on my line. And I also purposely went into Singtel app's roaming page to see what else I need to set away. Couldnt find anything amiss.
Then when I reached Taiwan and disabled my airplane mode, I received this shocking SMS:
Thinking I have already purposely set to use my travel eSIM by default so why am I still incurring data roaming charge to my Singtel line?
Opening up Singtel App greeted me with a rude awakening:
Hysterically incurred $74 data roaming charges out of thin air?
Then I went straight following SMS link and found this:
Which was defaulted to switch ON back then. This is where all the puzzle fits together.
Apart from phone's own data roaming toggle,you still need to additionally turn off this manually in order to fully turn off data roaming!
As such, I believe I was accidentally charged for that split second of transient data roaming usage as I disabled my phone's airplane mode and Singtel network ownself tries to connect to Taiwan's local data roaming network (despite me already defaulted phone's mobile data setting to use travel eSIM data and not to use Singtel SIM card's data) while my travel eSIM line also did the same to connect to network proper.
To highlight, that particular Data Roaming toggle on SingTel app is parked on settings page rather than within the roaming page menu.
And when I read further, Singtel's Pay-As-U-Roam is charging a whopping $25/MB of usage
. Peeps so this is how I began my Taiwan trip.
Right now I am in the midst of escalating this dispute to Singtel and hopefully they will issue a full waiver on it.
Peeps who are on SingTel line and travelling soon, please ensure to take additional precaution to turn off data roaming toggle on BOTH your phone and Singtel's app.
Then again, Singtel should comes clear:
1. Why is there another data roaming toggle in the first place?
2. Why is it also turned on by default without any caution? Even with phone settings they are always off by default to prevent any unnecessary charges with caution when turning on too.
3. And why is it also not parked together with your other roaming menu and rather parked separately under settings in its own menu?
accidentally picked up a call in thailand thinking that it’s a whatsapp call and i paid $7+ for less than a minute…
