I have to clarify; I'm not a KOI advocate, neither do I promote the extremely unhealthy obsession with the seemingly mundane drink.
Okay let me attempt to justify why some Singaporeans are so smitten with the milk+pearls+tea+sugar combo. People my age should know exactly when bubble tea was introduced to Singaporean tastebuds - we basically lived through the revolution which started with a monopolizing
Quickly (or 快可粒) before several other names mushroomed. So naturally people would be flocking back to this familiar drink, despite the fact that it's adopted a Barbie-doll name called
KOI. Just to give it some credit. KOI tastes slightly better than the regular $1.50 milk tea, and the smaller-than-others pearls fascinate my senses. But at $2.50 or more for other concoctions, it's a crazy deal, especially when I sit back and while slurping on a cup of KOI, decided that the extra dollar charged to me was absolutely for my queue slip, the plastic-sheathed straws and the choice to choose how much sugar I should be short-changed of in my drink.
Perfect business model.
The catch? Gong Cha (貢茶), the lovely dome-covered cup of milk-topped Oolong Tea is still my kind of poison. The frothy milk cap which you can choose to either mix in or sip directly from the top prolly beats those odd-shaped KOI pearls hands-down.
And did I tell you about my harrowing experienceS with the telco with the S and the L? And everything went back to 2 years ago, after my parents was talked into subscribing to a 4-in-1 service at a much lower price than a competing telco was offering. Then the problems started. My WiFi would go dead all of a sudden, and I wound up needing to restart the system several times before getting the service back on. And I called in the telco technician probably half a dozen times to fix the problem, and everytime the problem would pop right back in after a week or so after the servicing.Things got worse when my Dad came back from overseas and had to tap onto the WiFi; my connection would snap instantly from all the traffic. AND I SERIOUSLY WANTED TO PUT AN END TO IT. Then my parents EFFING RECONTRACTED IT. My Mum said, "it has a bigger bandwidth you know". And I thought things would get better.
HELL NO.
I thought my nightmare would end when the technician came in about A MONTH AGO to fix up the new modem (apparently it was the SAME MODEM MODEL). After fixing up everything, he said, "Miss, I think your telephone line got problem. I think I go check for you, and I come back on Monday to fix it up."
HHHOOOKKKAAYY. *eyebrow twitches*
I received a call on the promised Monday from the guy, who called me using a private number. "Eh, Miss, I don't think I can come down today. Don't mind give me a few days?" That was the last I heard from him - I didn't even get his name or number down.
BECAUSE I SO WANTED TO CALL UP HIS MANAGER AND SCREAM AT HIM FOR HIRING SUCH AN INCOMPETENT AND LAZY ARSE.
So I called the telco 1 week later, from the Monday the technician last called. The system made me press commands for 5 minutes and hold for another 5 before I could talk to a technical support personnel. After telling her about my problem, all the sweet voice could say was, "Oh, sure, I'll email the technical support people to ask them to help you trace the technician on the job."
Are you thinking that I'm stupid? Don't I know how much red tape you guys have UP THERE?!
No replies, whatsoever for 1 week. My Mum was practically screaming at me, my Dad calls me on my phone during lecture to ask me about the phone line, and my relatives even thought our line got cut off because we couldn't foot the bill. And all this while I had shitload of projects on hand. The superb service of that telco just made it worse twice over. So I held back my anger one night and dialled their helpline again.
"Eh, sorry miss, if you don't have your Dad's IC number (the line is under his name), I cannot retrieve your account details. Sorry ah."
What a load of bovine excretement. The previous lady I called could trace my account details simply from my Dad's name and my home phone address. INCOMPETENT.
And I called again; it was the third phone call to a horrible service provider. I was pinching myself for not convincing my parents to switch to the other telco with similar services. The lady on the line apologised profusely and promised to send a technician down over the weekend. And so a technician was sent to my place yesterday to fix something that has gone wrong since the start of the month. Marvellous. Then I received a call from my sis amidst my tuition session - "Jie, they say they have to CHARGE US FOR THE REPAIR SERVICE." Dear horrible telco, are you telling me that you are CHARGING me for a job you didn't complete?! Their justification is because this job was apparently out of their scope of normal maintenance services.
GO DIE. SERIOUSLY.
The most horrifying thing came today; the customer service lady called me back to ask if everything was alright, and apologised again. But when I started to broach the subject of asking for a 1-month fee waiver (since we were deprieved of our telephone service for 1 month and therefore I see no point in paying for something I didn't use), she immediately started to speak in gibberish and started uttering whatnot, before going back to the question, "so is there anything else that I can help you with?"
These people should be commissioned to represent rogue countries in nuclear talks.
This is, by far, the worst kind of customer service ever.
Oh, and did I mention that I'll attempt to call back and ask for my 1-month waiver? We shall see what kind of wayang excuses these people can come up with.
