suspending your mobile phone line

if you have plans to study overseas, avoid signing contracts with the local telcos. this means, no new mobile phones at low prices. it would really make things a lot easier to suspend your phone line when you are not bound by contracts.

i, very unwittingly, signed a 2-year contract with singtel last may and got my samsung at a really affordable price. but cancellation or suspension of phone line while under contract costs $400. for a 6-month period, my subscription cost would at most be $192, so it doesn’t make sense to cancel the line. the best way is to cancel as many additional services as possible, so you pay less.

things that you can cancel are data plan, caller id, auto-roaming, color-me-tones (if you use them) etc. i never understood why people would pay for color-me-tones. it doesn’t make much money sense to me. but i digress.

there’s good news though. singtel actually allows you to suspend your line for free even while under contract provided you’re there to study. i’m not so sure about other circumstances. but the troublesome part is that you’d have to photocopy a letter of acceptance to show them that you are indeed going to study.

but before you go drug-high on suspending your phone line, you may wanna consider if you need it for your uob internet banking. of course, all is not lost in this case. you can still suspend your line, but make sure you get your otp service switched to a token before you do that. it takes them 14 working days (that’s almost 3 weeks) to get the token mailed to your place and upon reception, you are required to sign an acknowledgment form and either mail it to them or personally bring it down to your uob branch. only then, is your token activated for use. so do what you have to early.