Mycat Sim: Being Charged For Contact Center Calls?

[4evermaat]

This may be of particular interest to anyone who thinks they may be charged for more voice minutes than they normally use. My bill for the myClick 590 unlimited plan is supposed to be 631 baht every month, including vat. No problems at all until the June 2012 billing cycle. I noticed the bill was over 30 baht higher. Now the regular bill only summarized the charges in groups....no call details. I saw I had been charged voice minutes.

I only use the My by Cat sim for either internet or to make calls to the call center: 1322 or 024012222. Those two contact center numbers (there may be others) are supposed to be free when using any cat sim card to place the call. I verified this via phone several times with different representatives.

Anyway, I call the contact center to mention that I have a problem with the voice call charges on my bill and my first step is to request call details. Again they admit that calls to the call center from cat sim are free. But to be sure, you must send email to contactcenter at cattelecom.com with the full name on the account and what month you are requesting the call details for. Attach a copy of your passport photo page and sign the copy at the bottom. (just like you would for opening an account or just about anything official in thailand). I suppose you'd have to go to the cat shop or go to an internet cafe or fujifilm with a scanner if you do not have one. It's a good idea to send the email before or during the call and ask the representative to verify they receive the email. They will also take your email and phone # for contact. With the call details in hand, you can then submit a complaint. We'll get to that in a second.

Then once they receive the email, you must wait two weeks to receive the call details (don't ask why) What actually happens is that the 2 weeks appear to be a waiting period. You must then call again and they will say they will send the details. At that point they should....but if it is like me you had to wait almost another 2 weeks before the details are sent.

Got the call details, which is a pdf with several pages of all times you have used the sim card to connect to a cat service in some way. So for those who leave their modem on 24/7, there will be many pages of connection to an ip address with 1 hour increments. my mifi device automatically shuts off if no devices are connected for 15 minutes. Surprisingly, no MB count is provided, only time count. To save some time, use the search feature and search for 'voice' to skip to all the occurrences of voice calls.

I discovered that the calls to 1322 are showing up as 322 on the call details; they leave off the 1 for some reason. The billing system for the myCat sim is flagging these calls as not being free (don't ask why), so you get charged the normal per minute rate.

So I reply to email detailing the date/time of the calls and the error in the billing system. You may want to prepare a fresh email at this stage, i replied to have continuity. BTW, as now you are making a new request, you need to send in a copy of your passport signed again to verify that you are the same person you were from the same email address. Always follow up with a phone call, requesting review via phone, sending the email either before or during the call. The representative said they'll look at it next month some time (3 weeks?). 'Do I get a phone call when the review is complete'......'no you must call back the contact center'.

'The same billing error may still occur in the future if the billing problem is not fixed? I really want a supervisor to contact me back about this'.....'Sir, you can request call details by sending email to ......[see above]. Can I help you anything else Sir?'

Normally cat is really good at calling back people, but that may only apply to service-related issues. This billing thing no one seems very interested without me having to follow up . The hoops I'm jumping through are a bit absurd for what appears to be a clear billing error somewhere in their automated billing system calculations . They need to whitelist 322 (1322) as a free call. We'll see what happens in 3 weeks. Has anyone else experienced a similar billing issue?

[4evermaat]

Update: still nothing from my June bill. July and August bill I just recently got the call details. Oh boy. A lady from Cat did contact me and we had quite an interesting conversation. She acknowledge the problem with being charged for 1322 calls on MyCat sim card exists, but that certain gov't issues can take a while to fix. I appreciated her honesty and she now wants to check her call details to see if she has the same problem . I resubmitted refund request with all 3 months a few days go. We'll see what happens.

And some workarounds for calling customer service:

- The other contact number: 024012222 is being flagged as a free call. This is great, but it seems like after hours, or certain times of the day people aren't around at this number. And they will always say call 1322 for any more problems.

- Use the email: be direct and to the point. Write clearly detailing the problem and how you'd like it to be resolved. Always leave your nickname and phone number for someone to call you back. They usually return within a few hours to 24 hours.

- if you are requesting call details for a month, they initially tell you it will take 2 weeks. But it seems like you must contact them again after the 2 weeks to 'remind' them about your original request. Whenever contacting the call center about an existing request, always quote the date/time and brief summary of the original request so they do not think that you are making a new request or otherwise get 'confused'

- technical issues are usually resolved quickly. But billing issue..... . The lady informed me that even though there is a dispute with the bill, and even if it is CAT's fault, if you do not want service disruption due to non-payment to continue to pay the bill (which I did).