Starhub: A Singapore style mugging?

A few years ago I went on holiday to Brazil. On the day I arrived three guys came up to me, hit me on the head, knocked me to the ground, hit me on the head again and took my money. It was not a pleasant experience.
Just a few months ago I move to Singapore to live and work. A colleague had a spare local-sim card and he lent it to me. We both agreed to transfer ownership of the sim, but it turned out to be quite a hassle. It couldn’t be done over the phone, online or by post. We had to go to a particular starhub centre and there were none near where we worked in central Singapore. We both had to go together to Dauby Gaut and wait for an hour to get it done.

While I had the sim in my phone I made a conscious decision to strictly limit the use of 3G. Most often I just used wifi, when it was available. When I saw a bill was slightly surpised to see that I had used 0.00877 GB ( just under 9 MB). I’m not exactly certain how that happened. Perhaps I viewed a map that I previously had downloaded but the phone refreshed via the 3G network.
I have frequently seen some starhub advertising that shows the cost of downloading to mobiles is something less than 35 SGD for 12GB. So I think that is might be acceptable to charge slightly more on other packages, may be even 30% extra. But to my amazement, I was charged 88 SGD for my tiny 0.00887 GB. At that rate 1 GB would cost more than 10,000 SGD, or to put it another way, I was charged over 317,000% above the advertised rate.
What’s worse is that my colleague didn’t show me the previous month’s bill, so when I saw it, there was a combined bill of 210 SGD. The best starhub has offered to do so far is to reduce it to 186 SGD.
What do you call it if a firm advertises one rate but charges 317,000% more?
Would it be appropriate to call it a Singapore style mugging?
If it is legal, then I think the law needs to be changed.
I must say I would have preferred if instead starhub had just sent someone to the airport when I arrive to mug me. I would have lost less money that way.

Response to Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens spoke on Progressive Radio (click here to listen to the broadcast)


When discussing the US lead invasion of Iraq, he mentioned that there are 4 conditions under which a country can be deemed to have lost its sovereignty and be open to international intervention to remove its government:

1: if it invades the territory or occupies the territory of neighbouring countries
2: if it violates the genocide convention (it is mandatory to prevent or punish genocide)
3: violates the non proliferation of nuclear weapons
4: gives support, encouragement and shelter to international terrorism

Lets look at the USA:
1: Invasion: The list of countries it has invaded either directly or by proxy over the past century is very long.

2: Genocide: The fire bombing of Tokyo on 25 Feb 1945 alone led to 100,000 civilian deaths. There were significantly more than 100,000 deaths in Cambodia in the spring of 1970 in the US Operation Menu.

3: Nuclear Weapons: The problem of nuclear weapons was born in the USA, they invented them and are the only country in history to ever use nuclear weapons. The sensible alternative to the nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not an invasion of Japan, but rather a negotiated surrender. The Japanese had already indicated their willingness to admit defeat and start talks.
Morally, if the US wants to be in a position to insist that other countries should give up their nuclear weapons programs, then they should lead by example.

4: The US has been the most consistent supporter of international terrorism for the past 60 years.

So using Hitch's criteria, the US has given up its sovereignty and so should be open to international intervention.

The biggest problem is that the US has been unable to get over the idea that if it is good for me then it is for the good. In general people are terrible judges of the morality of their own actions. When people don't have an external over-see-er, the consequence is that nuclear weapons are dropped on civilian centres ( Hiroshima and Nagasaki ) and the perpetrators think it was just.

Later in the discussion Hitchens mentioned that we should have 'blood for oil'. An important question for him is: how many barrels of oil is his youngest daughter's life worth?