Circles overcharged my elderly parents almost $600 and offered a $40 goodwill refund
Has anybody fallen for this before and could advice us?
Before I moved overseas, I ported both my elderly parents into Circles from M1. The offer at that time was $18 for 50GB of data. It worked pretty awesome for the first couple of months, everything was in order. I checked the bill and it was truly $18/month.
Recently, I came back and found out that after 6 months for my mum and 1 year for my dad, they were charged an extra $20 per month for unlimited data. I asked Circles what’s up with it and they said that it’s an automatic subscription which requires the consumer to opt out of. It seems that they sneaked this in to their “no-contract plan” at sign up and placed the burden of disputing it on the consumer.
Naturally, given that my parents use an average of 3GB a month, I told them there was no need for this and requested an adjustment. Months of this subscription came up to around $600 in total. They offered $40 as a goodwill refund… Do we have any options at all?
Netizens’ comments
- Not normally. Always read the T&C of the contract. For circles in particular their prices include a $10 “discount” for porting in your number, which is only valid for 1 year. Scummy but not illegal.
- Unfortunately this was probably sneaked into the T&Cs in the service agreement that I assume was legitimately signed. If your parents are illiterate you might have some kind of legal recourse but the time and effort taken to pursue the $600 will not be worth it at all.
Posting your account on IG / Facebook / TikTok and tagging Circles’ accounts would be the more viable option – they might cave in to the negative publicity and offer a full refund. - Auto subscription should be made illegal!
- Depending on the facts, including in particular whether you reasonably could have known of the extra charge, this may or may not amount to an “unfair practice” under the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act 2003. Try complaining to CASE, and/or the Consumer and Competition Commission of Singapore.