cdn1

Why do people need to be continuously plugged in and online all the freaking time. Clearly this was not being paid by the employer so it can't possibly be urgent or extremely important.

And the fact that this was a Canadian. Canadians already pay the most fees and taxes for telecommunication services in the world. And still this Canadian dumbass goes and tries this. People in Canada are so over-pampered, like to be baby-sit all the time and be coddled, oh we can't say this thats rude, oh dont use this word as its offensive.

Well guess what, you're not in Canada, don't expect the world to babysit you or coddle you, you face the consequences outside Canada!!

Rightly deserves the bill, pay up when u want to be plugged in all the time. Why not bear it and enjoy the IFE or something....? Where does stupidity stop with these people all the time that they can't live without their "smartphones" and internet access even for few hours.

Let this be a lesson for everyone. If it ain't important or urgent/emergency, be prepared to face the bills/consequences.

/rant over

pewpew

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BB10; Touch) AppleWebKit/537.35+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.2.1.3247 Mobile Safari/537.35+)

So... was your ex Canadian or something?

Often1

The passenger better hope that he can come to an arrangement with SQ because the system documents all those little "I Agree" and "keep me connected" boxes. He will lose a CC dispute in a heartbeat and he's on the hook for the entire sum to his bank, not SQ (which has already been paid).

Pop up boxes which ask you to select plans are hardly "fine print"

mczlaw

I like being connected in flight. Helps while away the hours. About to try this on EK, but I understand they have a pretty sweet deal ($20 per 100MB). Having said that, one would have to be pretty thick not to understand in advance what the probable costs of onboard wifi are going to be. Not sure about the Canadian connection, though.

--mcz

chx1975

I just checked my usage and it says: Nov 11-16 about 51.95MB used as measured by your tablet. Of course that's just a few hours of usage (because mainly I am off wifi) I was using Maps quite some, reading articles and checking email -- and again it was only 52MB. It is entirely possible to curb your data usage. This pax is a fool.

You want Firefox installed so that you can disable images. Otherwise mobile browsing will be expensive.

creampuff

Your credit card company is not a small claims court judge deciding on who owes who what. As long as there is some reasonable doubt that the charges are valid, if the cardholder asks the CC provider to chargeback, they will do the chargeback and leave any subsequent fighting to the cardholder and the merchant to sort themselves out directly.

The merchant, SQ in this case, may then take direct civil action against the cardholder to recover the allegedly genuine charges. But the chance of SQ doing this, with all the bad publicity and with the probability that the country of the contract is likely to be Singapore and the hapless WiFi surfer probably has no assets in Singapore, well the probability of SQ actually taking any civil action would be almost zero.

As I said, the CC company are not the arbiter of disputes. It is likely that as there is an ongoing relationship between the CC company and SQ, if SQ has already been paid for this transaction (which they may not have been), then the CC company may well do the chargeback by reducing a future remittance to SQ by this disputed amount.

This is certainly the way it worked when I disputed about 1 years worth of internet charges billed to my credit card by an incompetent service provider who would not cancel it as instructed. My bank (which was not in the country of the transaction) re-credited me with the charges which I disputed, an entire years worth. The internet service provider got most irate and sent me a number of nasty letters from a solicitor, which I threw in the bin.

Often1

Totally different issues. People attempt and win chargebacks everyday. But, it is when the facts are on their side. In your case, you cancelled the service, but the ISP continued to debit your CC. Thus, it was an improper charge and the CC issuer made it right through the dispute process.

Here, the underlying complaint -- so far as we know -- is that the user apparently chose a plan which did not include enough data and either chose not to be notified when he went over his allotment or was notified and continued on. That is a loser as a dispute.

CC disputes are useful for situations where the facts are clear. But, CC issuers are not small claims courts.

SQ most certainly has been paid. As a major and stable vendor, it is unlikely that any appreciable % of its receiveables are held back.

creampuff

In my case I cancelled the service, but I had no evidence for my CC provider that I cancelled the service other than I said so (the cancellation was done by phone to the service provider).

I'm not going to research SQs internet rates, but someone said it was SIN20 per 25 megabyte. In the case reported here and at that charging rate 2.5GB would have had to been used. The Canuk flyer says he sent a 100MB document and visited a number of webpages, but that does not sound like 2.5GB worth which is an extraordinarily large amount of data. IMHO this alone would be sufficient to cast enough doubt as to the validity of the charge for a successful chargeback.

As I also said, the CC provider is not a small claims court. If there is doubt, the CC provider chargeback and let the cardholder and the merchant biff it out in a real small claims court if they really feel like taking it further.

feizhu

Correct me if I am wrong but I believe the contract is between the passenger and On Air, which supplies the internet? SQ is merely the middleman?

AA_EXP09

Good luck with that when CASE won't touch the Jover Chew case (and I believe that going after a sole proprietorship would be a lot easier, especially given the overwhelming evidence against him...)

AA_EXP09

2.5GB is not a lot of data...
(one torrented movie could easily be more than this.)
As for this guy 'I wish I could blame it on Netflix or something', this would not be a possibility in any case as without a VPN Netflix is blocked in Singapore.

zehbra

On top of that: Many people are completely oblivious on how much goes on "behind" the scenes if they don't stop it. Dropbox, OneDrive, updates, etc. It takes a bit of effort to stop all of that. I'm thinking this is entirely on the passenger.