So the World Cup is back on again. Must say that I haven’t been following much football or F1 for ages because I didn’t subscribe to the sport channels any more on cable.

Anyway, at the last minute (after the first day actually), my brother had a change of heart and decided to give in to the exorbitant fees (S$112.35 + S$10.70 activation fee) charged by Singtel mioTV for the World Cup package to watch the matches.

Check out this infographic from the The Straits Times Facebook page on the price to watch the World Cup in Singapore over the last few rounds:

Despite the general anger directed towards Singtel for the high prices. I’m inclined to swear at Singtel but the truth is, I’m pretty sure that FIFA is also sucking A LOT money out of Singtel.

So if we want to blame anyone, we need to blame the dumbfucks in Singtel and Starhub who had a bidding war that resulted in the deal that allowed FIFA to charge us so much money for them to broadcast the matches live.

Since I haven’t been following football or F1 much anymore, I was prepared to not watch any match and just watch the highlights and/or keep up with my Twitter feed on what is going on. At most I’ll just go out somewhere to watch one or two of the matches on the weekend. No biggie.

Then my brother changed his mind and decided to subscribe to the World Cup package. Then the whole fuss and circus began.

Firstly, my brother called up Singtel and after finally managing to get through after like 15~20 mins (I think that’s what he said), he was told that he couldn’t get the channels activated and only the main account holder (ie me) could make the application.

As I was in the office, I told my brother to fill up the form on the Singtel mioTV site to make the application. Someone from Singtel Customer Service team called me after a few hours. They need some details that I didn’t have on hand and she was nice enough to give me her direct number to call back.

Then nothing happened until the next day. Someone from Singtel CS called me again asking me if anyone has contacted me. I was like no and then the person said they’ll get someone to call me again. A few minutes later, the same guy called back and asked for the same details again which I provided to the first CS girl the day before.

I was starting to get annoyed with all the calls asking for the same information and yet nothing happened again still.

I suddenly got a mention from a Singtel CS Officer asking me for all the details which I have provided twice before 9 hours later. I work in an environment where I see CSO folks getting scolded over things which are not their fault so I generally try not to flare up at the CSO folks.

However, I was really pissed off by the Twitter mention that I got. Like seriously. I had provided the details accurately twice before and here comes a CSO asking for the same details AGAIN for the THIRD TIME and the issue was the first and/or second CSO captured my NRIC wrongly (which they subsequently told me in a DM).

Highly infuriating process to get the channels activated. The website sign up process sucked, the back end process sucked and the customer service was messed up too.

If it wasn’t for my brother who insisted on subscribing to the World Cup matches, I would have just not continued with the process by the time the second CSO called.