Gahmen Agencies
On the evening of 31 December 2008, I tried to renew my HDB season parking through their online portal www.hdb.gov.sg. It is not easy to navigate through the maze which is the HDB portal. For example, for a first time person like me, if I wanted to renew my season parking, which of the myraid choices should I click? For a first-timer, you would think "Home Owners > Parking Facilities > Season Parking" would bring you to the page you want, as shown in the screen catpure below:
No...... because it brings you to this page instead:
Which was an overview page about season parking! * face palm *
The second time I clicked, I clicked on "e-Services" which is located on the top main navigation bar. This time it brought me to an expanded long list of services:
Yes, the list is that long! How do they expect anyone to find any services in that long and very wordy list? The default setting for the page should have been "collapse" and not "expand" and it'll look like below, which will be neater and easier to navigate further:
When I finally managed to select the service I need, which is to renew season parking, after keying a few screens of requested information, the system told me that my account is "tagged and no renewal is allowed. Please visit the HDB office for more information." (or something like that, as far as I can recall).
Crap! Because it was evening and the HDB offices were already closed, I can only visit the neighbouring HDB office on 2nd January 2009. I better get the season parking renewed first thing in the morning of 2nd January as I do not wish to risk getting a parking fine.
When I visited HDB office, I found out that I was not able to renew my season parking as I have outstanding unpaid service and conservancy charges with the Town Council. It happened simply because my-wife-thought-I-had-paid-and-I-thought-she-had-paid kind of situation.
If the system can block me from renewing my season parking due to my outstanding bill with another organisation, I was wondering then why didn't the system just prompt me that I need to settle my unpaid charges with the Town Council. I would gladly settle the bill online (which we usually do) and I wouldn't need to make an unnecessary trip down to the HDB office.
However, what I found most tok kong realisation of this experience, even if cross-agencies, they can help to demand payment. If you don't pay, you won't be allowed to use the service of the other agencies.
Wow! If only our business and companies are cooperating like that, e.g. if Company XYZ owes my company money, Company ABC can help to deny Company XYZ from doing business with them and help my company to demand payment! Then my December 2008 would not be the lowest amount of payments received for the whole of last year and no company in Singapore would be worried about the current economic situation and not being able to collect payments.
Singapore Inc. has indeed a very good business model. The gahmen always win! :p
4 comments:
You are wrong.
The govt doesn't always win. Sometimes, they lose...when a bigger fish comes along and whack them.
But what's true is....no matter what...
YOU ALWAYS LOSE!
Haha! You are right!
I guess on their own turf, gahmen always win... and for us, even on our own turf, we lose! :p
What you are seeing is what happens when the public service ai-pi-ai-qi and hire a laupok vendor. :-P
Laupok web interface is not entirely HDB's fault 'cos the site probably satisfies the tender requirements, albeit in a damn brain-damaged way. HDB officer in charge of the tender probably doesn't understand web interface design to evaluate good or bad either. Finally, very hard to write good tender specs. Especially for fluffy things like good UI design. :-)
Reason why HDB system cannot inform you about TC problem is because TC's problems generally not HDB's problems. By blocking your HDB renewable, HDB is already doing TC a favour. Therefore, requirement to tell you about TC's issues will not be in the tender specs. Also, it will cost extra which HDB probably doesn't want to pay. :-P
Not defending HDB. Just explaining the sense in the madness because I kay poh. :-P
A lot of people think PAP is Lee Kuan Yew. PAP is a system. With or without Mr Lee, it will thrive. You sometimes have to admire the system.
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