Everyone knows Yuna. She’s an international singer with multiple hit songs. Her duet single with Usher — Crush — made it to the top three of the R&B Billboard charts and her 2016 album, Chapters, was one of the top-10 best R&B albums of that year but…that doesn’t mean one of Malaysia’s most talented singers in recent times is spared from ordinary people’s telco problems. She like any other mobile phone user, is not happy with her telco, according to her post on Twitter.
mmm i think its time i changed my malaysian phone service. so ridiculous i didnt even turn on my data overseas and still i paid a lot of $$ & still phone is barred. do i gotta call u guys everytime this happens/when im back?
— Yuna Zarai (@yunamusic) November 11, 2018
In a tweet, Yuna claims that despite paying “a lot of money” and having the data turned off on her “Malaysian phone service”, the phone service was still barred. From her tweet, you can say that she’s annoyed.
In a tweet following up the first one, she compared the “Malaysian phone service” with her “US phone service plan” that offered unlimited mobile roaming data even when she used the service in KL, Singapore and “everywhere”. She also adds that she pays much less for the US telco compared to the amount that she needs to pay to get her Malaysian number unbarred when she returns to Malaysia.
ive been living on my US phone service plan in KL/singapore/everywhere I go & I get unlimited data (eventho slow but i can still text & make calls) and pay much less than what i pay everytime i come home & trying to unbar my malaysian number 🤷🏻♀️
— Yuna Zarai (@yunamusic) November 11, 2018
Currently, Yuna is based in the US but she regularly returns to Malaysia for business and personal matters. In any case, for someone that is out of the country for months at a time, it would make sense for her to suspend her Malaysian line while she is away. However, we can understand that the Malaysian number might be one of her personal numbers that perhaps her family and friends use to get in touch with her, hence she chooses to keep the number active.
On the other hand, if her line is active and she continues to pay her bills on time, technically the line shouldn’t be barred. Typically, a line is barred for two main reasons: 1) for not paying your bills on time, 2) if your usage has hit your account credit limit. We seriously doubt that Yuna has a problem to pay her bills.
If you are like Yuna and travel a lot or spend more time outside Malaysia, there are a number of options for you:
Get a prepaid line with long validity period or credit doesn’t expire
The line with the longest validity period we know of is Unifi Mobile prepaid. Unifi Mobile offers credit that doesn’t expire so long as you send a text message, make a call or use your data once every 90 days.
The other option would be TuneTalk prepaid which offers one-year validity for RM28. All you need to do is pay a one-time fee to keep your line active for 365 days.
Get a low-commitment plan with auto-renewal
Yoodo and TuneTalk Vibe offers very low monthly commitment with auto-renewal options (the cheapest Yoodo plan is RM3/month with 50 SMS, the cheapest Vibe plan is RM15/month with 4GB of data with some call minutes bundled in) which means, the line will stay active as long as your credit/debit card is active to pay for the auto-renewal.
Convert to a supplementary line
The other way Yuna can avoid this problem is to convert her main line into a supplementary line under a principle line holder that’s residing in Malaysia. This way if she has problems with her line, she doesn’t have to wait till the next time she returns to Malaysia to sort it out, the principle line holder can sort the problem out for her.
Ever the consummate professional, Yuna didn’t mention the Malaysian telco that has barred her line but we’re curious as to which one is it. Any guesses?
