Stanton, Emms & Sia (SES) is a leading research and consultancy firm that specialises in providing market and industry research and consultancy services to clients operating in the food, drink and agrifood industries. We have been providing services to clients since 1991.
Our region of operations is East Asia and we have research and consultancy resources in all South East Asian countries, China, Hong Kong SAR, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and other EU countries, USA, Canada and South Africa.
Our latest multi-client reports are as follows. Click the link to download the brochures
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To Whom It May Concern (6 April 2011)
Dear Sir or Madam,
Stanton, Emms & Sia would like to provide our deepest apologies to our clients, prospective clients, business associates and other persons across the world who may have tried to contact us recently and found that our main phone and fax lines, namely (+65) 6334 7030 and (+65) 6223 2010, were permanently engaged and not working.
We are aware that this has caused problems for a range of parties in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Philippines, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore and Thailand where we were negotiating new projects, had project tender discussions going on, and had active projects underway. It has also caused major problems for a large fax back marketing campaign relating to our new multi-client report titled “India: Is This Market Now Ready for Foreign Food and Drinks, A Reality Check for 2011 to 2016”.
After being advised by a number of clients and business associates about this situation, we investigated the matter and found that it had been caused by the unauthorised termination of the two numbers and our telephone account by our telecommunications service provider, SingTel (full name Singapore Telecommunications Limited) on the instructions of a person who is, at the time of writing, not known to Stanton, Emms & Sia, its management, its staff or its close business associates. The situation, as advised to us by SingTel, and is very clearly a major error on the part of SingTel, and also a breach of contract by SingTel.
We have demanded that the error be corrected with immediate effect so that we have working main telephone and fax lines, however their highly bureaucratic service team and their prevarications and extreme defensiveness over the situation, has resulted in us having to make a formal report to the Singapore Police Force about the matter in order to force the reinstatement of our telephone and fax to operational status. We now expect that our telephone and fax lines will be working at some stage today (6 April 2011).
We view this matter as a very serious and irresponsible breach of contract by SingTel. We are also appalled and disgusted at the state of SingTel’s service response to our compliant, which has been nothing short of substandard for such a serious case as this. We are deeply shocked at SingTel’s negative and “could not care less” attitude towards our complaint. This is particularly concerning for us as an international business based in Singapore because SingTel is meant to be the "market leading" telecommunications company, a reputable company listed on SGX and a key government linked entity.
In view of this, we have, today, made an initial detailed complaint about the incident to the Singapore telecommunications industry regulator, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) about this incident in writing. This letter includes a request for the IDA’s urgent assistance in dealing with our demands from SingTel for information about the person who terminated our phone account and lines and a very clear explanation of what happened in SingTel’s system to provide an unauthorised person with the ability to close our account in an unauthorised manner. This information is required from SingTel so that we can consider our next steps in connection with their breach of contract with us. A copy of our initial letter of complaint is available here: Letter of Complaint to IDA (6 April 2011).
Currently, we are not sure whether this is a case of industrial espionage, an error, or a collapse in SingTel’s management and internal controls over its customers accounts. As SingTel has yet to apologise for the incident due to its highly apparent defensiveness over the error, we will be aggressively pursuing the matter to a favourable conclusion for Stanton, Emms & Sia. A brief discussion with our lawyer indicates that SingTel is in breach of more than its contract with us, it is also likely to be in breach with some of Singapore’s telecommunication industry and consumer protection laws.
Finally, I would just to reiterate our apologies to anyone that tried to contact us while our main phone and fax numbers were not operational. We have been operating with very high service standards over the past 20 years and will certainly continue to operate in such a manner into the long term, irrespective of the challenges that errant service providers, such as SingTel, throw at us.
Yours sincerely,
Anthony L. Emms
Managing Partner
Stanton, Emms & Sia
Singapore
6th April 2011
Follow up letter dated 10th May 2011
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
Dear Sir or Madam,
Further to our letter of apology to our clients and other contacts regarding our telephone and fax service outage dated 6th April 2011.
It has, this week, come to our attention that a small number of our business contacts, including one of our banks, were told by Singapore’s telephone directory enquiry staff that we had terminated our main telephone number due to the closure of our office. We have today been advised by IDA that Singapore’s telephone directory enquiry service is run by SingTel.
This occurred during the time that our main phone line was not working because of the unauthorised termination of our phone number and our telephone account by our telecommunications service provider, SingTel (full name Singapore Telecommunications Limited) on the instructions of a person who is still, at the time of writing, not known to Stanton, Emms & Sia, its management, its staff or its close business associates.
As we currently do not know how many contacts were provided with incorrect information by SingTel’s telephone directory enquiry staff, we would like to clarify in writing to any contacts that tried to ring us during the service outage caused by SingTel’s erroneous actions that our office was not closed, nor did we terminated our phone or fax numbers. At the time of the service outage that affected our main phone number, we were still operating in the manner that we are today, and were before SingTel’s breach of contract with us.
As an update to our letter of 6th April 2011, SingTel has now missed its three self-imposed deadlines to provide us with full information about the person who authorised SingTel to terminate our phone, fax and telephone account. In view of this, and following strong written warnings to SingTel not to miss any further deadlines to supply us with information, we have now issued a detailed formal complaint to the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) against SingTel and its two CEOs titled as follows:
“Formal complaint to the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore about SingTel’s breach of its duties under its Licence to Provide Facilities-Based Operations, the Telecommunications Act and Related Codes of Practice, Standards, Guidelines and Best Management, Internal Control, Accounting and Service Practices”.
This formal complaint of around 100 pages was issued in two parts, one on 2nd May 2011 and, the other, on 6th May 2011 and covered the following matters:
Complaint 1: Singtel permitted an unauthorised person to terminate our phone and fax numbers on 23 March 2011;
Complaint 2: Singtel failed to apply any financial and other forms of controls over account closures when it permitted the termination of our phone and fax number on 23 March 2011;
Complaint 3: Singtel failed to act in a reasonable, responsible and service-like manner to a longstanding customer when it permitted the termination of our phone and fax numbers on 23 March 2011;
Complaint 4: Singtel formally closed our account number 88128281 on 7 April 2011, which was 2 days after they had been informed by Stanton, Emms & Sia on 5 April 2011 to cease and desist in their activities to terminate this account;
Complaint 5: Singtel issued a cheque to Stanton, Emms & Sia on 7th April 2011, which was received by us on 10th April 2011. This cheque was issued in payment of the balance due to us on our account number 88128281 irrespective of the fact that Singtel was advised orally and in writing on the 5th and 6th April 2011 to cease and desist in the termination of our account number 88128281;
Complaint 6: Based on information provided to us by Singtel’s staff in the period 5th to 7th April 2011 there were some unusual erroneous information in Stanton, Emms & Sia’s entries in the customer database that Singtel’s staff had access to in the period;
Compliant 7: Singtel did not issue a letter of notification of phone number and account termination to Stanton, Emms & Sia on 23 March 2011;
Complaint 8: Singtel did not provide us with three (3) days written notice of its intention to terminate our phone services in line their standard terms and conditions;
Complaint 9: Singtel did not act in good faith or in line with its duties to its customer under its contract when it terminated our phone and fax services;
Complaint 10: Singtel’s lack of immediate, decisive, professional and customer-oriented response to our complaint on 5 April 2011;
Complaint 11: Singtel has taken an unreasonable amount of time to deal with a very important customer complaint and release critical information to Stanton, Emms & Sia;
Complaint 12: Singtel set 3 self-imposed deadlines to provide the account termination documentation to Stanton, Emms & Sia and, in all cases, failed to meet the deadlines;
Complaint 13: Singtel does not appear to have applied best practice in terms of archiving the important hard copy records of its branches when they are under renovation and this situation has led to unreasonable delays in Singtel providing us with a copy of the account termination documentation that was signed and submitted by the said Jessie Woo when our incoming phone and fax number services were terminated by Singtel in breach of contract on 23 March 2011;
Complaint 14: The effectiveness of Singtel’s own phone and email based communication system in an emergency situation for a customer in distress and with immediate demands for high quality service from a decision-maker with Singtel; and,
Complaint 15: Singtel’s management and internal control functions over its customer database system may be substandard, and so have provided risks that there are weaknesses in protection of Stanton, Emms & Sia’s End User Service Information (EUSI) from actual (possibly part of the 23 March 2011 breach of contract incident) or potential risks from unauthorised usage as is necessary under consumer data protection requirements, including that under Section 3 of the Code of Practice for Competition in the Provision of Telecommunication Services 2010
In view of SingTel’s management team’s intransigence towards our complaint, we decided to follow up on what happened with SingTel’s operational staff, who, unlike the company’s management, were more than happy to assist with our enquiries. Our follow up investigation focused on what happened in SingTel’s systems that led to its breach of contract with us, to it erroneously terminating our phone number and telephone account, and to the wrong information provided to some contacts by SingTel’s phone directory enquiry service staff. This information, together with information from other sources, was used to develop our above complaints to the IDA.
We are unable to tolerate SingTel’s actions, inclusive of its very negative attitude and appalling behavior towards a customer, as described above, because of the damage that it has done to our international connections and business since it breached its telecommunications service contract with us. This incident and its spin off effects have been highly traumatic for us, which is why we have issued a robust and detailed complaint to the IDA.
We are now hoping that this complaint will result in us discovering in a very speedy manner who authorised the termination of our main phone number, which:
resulted from an evident cascade of errors in SingTel’s integrated systems, and, also,
led to a small number of our business contacts being incorrectly informed by SingTel’s staff that we had terminated our phone numbers and closed our office.
Finally, I would just to reiterate our apologies to anyone that tried to contact us while our main phone and fax numbers were not operational. We have been operating with very high service standards over the past 20 years and will certainly continue to operate in such a manner into the long term, irrespective of the challenges that errant service providers, such as SingTel, throw at us.
Tel: (+65) 6334 7030 Fax: (+65) 6223 2010 Assisting clients to identify and develop profitable business opportunities in the food, drink and agrifood markets of East Asia since 1991