Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Developers can continue for now....


Continue what?????

Urban Development Authority (URA) has extended the expiry date by 3 months till Dec 2008.
Developers can now have another 3 months to submit building plans where some of floor areas, sold to you at thousands of dollars per square feet, are actually for window and planter boxes.

Now - The floor areas for window and planter boxes are not accounted officially to URA under the permitted Gross Floor Area. But the developers, with the help of architects, are able to carve out these small areas and sell them to homebuyers as part of total floor areas mentioned in the sales brochures. So mathematically speaking, total saleable areas could be higher than the permitted Gross Floor Area for the development ie. more $ for the developers.

The future to come - URA will require the developers to include such areas as part total Gross Floor Area computation.

Have you ever wonder why your 1,400-sq-ft condo unit looks smaller than 1,400 sq ft you paid for?

The answer - Look at the potted plants at the windows!!!

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Singtel irked me today!


Yesterday I waited for 15mins waiting to talk someone at 1626.

My objective was to terminate my home telephone subscription. After about 15 years of paying $45 per quarter for our home telephone subscription, we finally agree to end it. But the funny thing is, it is not that easy.

I was told today I cannot terminate the land line as I have an existing broadband contract valid till Sep 2009.

The technical part is that the broadband requires a land line and thus they cannot cancel.

My counter response was - I signed for 2 separate services. I should thus have the right to terminate either service. I am not aware that I have automatically signed for a 24-month contract for a land line when all I did was to sign for 24-month broadband contract.

I told by the polite and patient Singtel staff that this is certainly unacceptable.

I was offered a compromised outcome ie. partially waived my quarterly land line subscription charges from now till the expiry date of my broadband contract.

As for Singtel, I think you better start thinking of resolving this technical hitch!!!!

So friends, beware!