By Jeff Yong
AS I get older, I get swamped with regard to things like paying bills on time. Worse for me, I have to take care of things at different locations. Don’t ask me how I landed in this unique position.
Recently, I got an SMS message from a public utility company telling me that I hadn’t paid the bill for two months. I thought that shouldn’t be difficult to resolve since I could use online banking to fix the ‘problem’.
I keyed in the account number and amount to be paid as stated in the SMS message. But I couldn’t complete the transaction as I was told that the system was busy. This went on for a week or so.
I finally saw the light when I put on my reading glasses! It dawned on me that the account number given to me in the SMS message was short by two digits.
I was wondering why the utility company went through the trouble of informing me of my arrears, and yet didn’t give me the full account number.
Still, I thought there wouldn’t be a problem as the company runs a so-called phone-in careline. The first thing it asked after ascertaining my language preference was my account number!
I thought I could key in my NRIC number to end my woes. Nope. As I was against a brick wall, I put the phone down.
No worries, I thought. I could write an email to ask for my account number. I furnished my full name, NRIC number and mobile number (which was where the SMS went to in the first place).
I informed the utility company that I wanted to pay my arrears, but stated I didn’t have my account number as I didn’t have the bill with me because I was in another state at the time.
I got a reply informing me that I owed more than I originally thought. It still referred to my account minus the two digits!
I wrote again, this time, switching to English instead of the national language, to make myself very clear.
The second reply came and said it couldn’t give the account number to me as that would be in violation of the Personal Data Protection Act!
For goodness sake, it wasn’t a bank account number that I was seeking.
When I finally got back to my home base, I rummaged through my mountain of documents (fortunately, not debts) and found that utility bill – the needle in the haystack, so to speak.
After this ‘ordeal’, I’m wondering what’s the use of notifying consumers with incomplete account numbers?
Talking about personal data, let me tell you of some encounters I had a few months ago.
After I had gone through a check-up on my poor heart at a certain medical institution, I was advised to do a coronary angiogram because some parts of the heart couldn’t be seen accurately.
I was told that I could do it at the institution itself or elsewhere, subject to my preference, medically and financially.
Some days later, I was contacted by another medical centre that offered me free check-ups without having to do any angiogram.
But I was also asked whether I held a platinum or gold credit card. Interesting question indeed.
Over the course of two weeks, the centre’s representative called and called. I crumbled and relented. I decided to go for a look.
Located at a row of office blocks, it didn’t look convincing enough. I decided to give it a miss and went back to the original institution which eventually gave me a clean bill of health.
A few weeks later, I kept receiving calls from that same number. I had by then labelled it as a ‘heart scam’ instead of heart scan!
Then in the middle of Raya, that same number appeared on my WhatsApp chat and started promoting Raya cookies!
And ‘they’ say we are protected by the Personal Data Protection Act!
Jeff Yong, after making his mark in the twisty maze of mainstream journalism, has finally decided to enjoy what he does best – observing the unusual and recounting the gleeful. He can be contacted at lifestyle.borak@gmail.com.
