Dear NETS

It is bad enough that the small merchants I patronise now ask me to pay cash instead of by the NETS (Network for Electronic Transfer) debit card system, ever since the merchant fees were hiked 400%, now I am receiving phone calls on my mobile phone from some insurance company connected to you.

I find the AXS stations you set up fairly useful, which is why I signed up. But can you not give my contact information to such companies to bug me? In addition to wasting my time, these calls cost me money too, because my mobile is not on a free incoming calls plan.

I am already dealing with calls from telemarketers with heavily accented Mandarin asking me to participate in dodgy surveys (to which I reply, "No speak Chinese" and hang up). And then there are the cold calls from credit card companies. I also no longer fill up lucky draw forms at travel shows, the supermarket, or any major event these days in order to avoid the dreaded timeshare scum who call me.

I don't have privacy laws in Singapore to protect me from such nonsense, because the Government is "pro-business" and puts business interests over its citizens' right to privacy.

I mean, the Government already sees fit to even allow businesses to spam my email box as long as they have the "ADV" tag in their subject line, and a link to unsubscribe from a company's unsolicited spam. I doubt if we will see a Do Not Call registry or law in our country any time soon.

Now I have to deal your telemarketers too, or those of your partners.

That sucks.

The gentlemen who called me thanked me for being "a valued customer of NETS", before he went into his insurance spiel. I didn't feel like "a valued customer of NETS" because my contact information was being used this way.

In future, I will no longer participate in any of your campaigns or give your company any more of my information. I don't think I can trust you any more.

P.S. You really need to turn on password protection for users who sign up for the eAssistant service at your AXS stations, if you have not already. Anyone with an eAssistant user's IC number can see what companies the user pays bills to every month. I had to turn on my password manually, using your settings screen.