Singtel fires a helpdesk staff who told customer 'to go to hell' in email -- What if it's just a typo?

You may think it is what the Singtel helpdesk staff deserves to get. Telling a customer to 'please go to hell!!' is for sure nothing helpful. Especially not for him/herself.

But I've just had to wonder if it may be a case of a simple typo. The helpdesk staff might have meant 'help' instead of 'hell'. Will that honest mistake (if that's really what happened) have to lead a firing?

Even the rude & not-professional use of double exclamatory marks might lead to at least, a scolding or a warning. And not the staff being shown the door!! Ah, me too commits the same mistake, but this blog is hardly intended to be a professional one.

Being asked to "go to hell" is probably the last thing one would expect from a technical helpdesk reply, but this was exactly what a STOMPer received.

In an email to the citizen journalism website, the STOMPer, who did not give his name, said that he wrote an email to Singtel's internet customer service department to resolve a technical issue.

From the attachment sent by the reader, the problem seemed to have been a latency issue, in which the network or Internet service seems to run slower than it should.

The reply from the technical service staff was a one liner, "Hai sir, please go to hell!"

Writing about his unpleasant experience, the STOMPer said, "I called them to verify that this email address (from the reply) belongs to the ISP (Internet Service Provider).

"When I showed them the email, the supervisor apologized right away and said that he would make investigations."

The citizen journalism website contacted the telco, which said that the staff in question had been fired.

In an email reply to STOMP, a spokesman for the company wrote:

"We are very sorry for the incident and have apologised to the customer.

"SingTel takes a very serious view of this matter and after our investigation, the staff has been dismissed."

From Asiaone, "Tech helpdesk asks customer to "go to hell"".

The ISP helpdesk staff who cursed a customer in an email has been fired.

This update from SingTel follows a STOMPer's contribution detailing how he emailed the staff for help on a technical issue but was told 'to go to hell'.

In an email to STOMP, a SingTel spokesman wrote:

"We are very sorry for the incident and have apologised to the customer.

"SingTel takes a very serious view of this matter and after our investigation, the staff has been dismissed."

From STOMP, "Fired: ISP helpdesk staff who told customer 'to go to hell' in email".