I was charged RM38/day for 4 consecutive days last week while I was in Singapore & somehow my phone's setting got the data roaming on, but, I didn't use my phone when I'm out & without wifi, so, I guess the only data traffic was the incoming push text messages from WhatsApp, which can't be much volume.

I called Maxis helpdesk & they told me as long as you use more than 512 Bytes of data, they will charge you RM38/day, claiming that this is for your protection as you could clock up a lot more expenses if you hit high volume of data. Daylight robbery RM38 for 513 bytes of data!!!

To make matter more infuriating, I discovered that my wife's Hotlink has data roaming in Singapore for RM10/day! Clearly, Maxis is milking post-paid customers. Time to switch to pre-paid?

On detailed check of my bill, I noticed Maxis charged me RM38 for 4 days PLUS an additional line under Roaming Calls & Data Charges for Singapore - Data Charges that show: [Operator: SingTel; Type: Internet; Qty: 25,400KB; Total (RM): 15.21]. Definitely looks very suspicious that they double-bill me.

Maxis call centre initially explained that the additional RM15.21 charge for data roaming was due to my usage exceeding the 500MB daily limit. I challenged them that as my data roaming was accidentally turned on & I have not been using data without wifi, I can't have used above 500MB in a day.

After checking, Maxis called back to explain that the way to interpret this Data Charge line item is: I used a total of 25.4MB of data via SingTel across the billing cycle, but, 4 of those days, my usage for the day exceeded 512KB (the threshold to trigger RM38 daily charge). The charge of RM15.21 is for the other day(s)' data usage that I did not hit the threshold of 512KB.

I can't refute their argument. But, the fact that they twist & turn to get a 'logical' explanation is sufficient to give one the impression of overbilling & as post-paid customers, the sky is the limit for such practices

I am not refuting that I am liable for some data roaming charges, it is the over-charging that I am refuting. In Malaysia, I use about 200MB PER MONTH of Data, with Waze navigations, WhatsApp & ocassional net browsing. In Sgp, I did nothing except that the data roaming was somehow turned on for 5 days. So, go figure out.