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It’s been an awful year with Maxis. If you’ve been following my Maxis broadband experience, you would have known how Maxis is capable of launching untested products on real consumers like you and me, while charging a hefty sum on our expenses to fund their ‘beta testing’ programmes.

To sum it up, here’s a chronicle of the Maxis Broadband episode:

March 2008: Signed up with Maxis Broadband, where they bundled it with a HP laptop. Be very careful with bundled promotions- things can become very ugly when you have problem with the service later. Each party will push the responsibility of the refund for as long as they can, which I had the chance to experience a few months later. The plan is to be paid in 24-month installments, at RM178 per month.

September 2008: After having countless connectivity issues, I terminated the broadband service on the grounds that Maxis has failed to provide satisfactory service. And I thought that was that.

Hewlett Packard (HP) continue to charge me RM178 a month, even after I’ve canceled the service. I called up Maxis, and they say there’s nothing they can do about it, since it’s HP that’s charging my card, not Maxis (a blatant lie which I will find out only much later)

October 2008: I canceled the credit card, hoping that HP will notice that I am not paying and decides to talk to me and resolve the issue. A very naive attempt. Because of the card’s cancellation, the payment of RM178 was accelerated and I was to pay RM2,670 one shot! So much for diplomacy.

For the months that follow, I called up both Maxis and HP to resolve the issue. I told them I am willing to pay for the laptop, the crappy service that Maxis provided in the first 6 months, but I am definitely not going to pay for the crappy service for the remaining 18-months which I’ve already terminated.

Like any big corporations, Maxis and HP decides the best way to resolve such issue is to use their favorite strategy- Taiqi. So they taiqi me around; made me go to the Maxis Center in KLCC a few times and spent away my productive hours calling up HP Customer Service hotlines for the next few months. The strategy is to wear me out, so that I’ll raise the white flag and succumb to their evil ways.

The end result was as expected. Nothing was resolved by these corporations which claims to have multi-billion ringgit resources at their disposal.

December 2008: Just when I was about to surrender, I realized I was not alone in combating these evil conglomerates. I stumbled upon Yusli’s blog, who shared the same predicament as myself. Yes, in it, he revealed the magic words that would be crucial in my quest to slay the evil doers- Malaysian Communications & Multimedia Commission (MCMC).

I immediately sent off my complaints along with the documents that was required to support my claim. And I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the following email from Maxis:

Dear Mr Lee,

In reference to your modem that was returned on 10th September 2008 due to poor coverage, please allow us to advice on the refund.

We are in the midst of processing the refund for the remaining of 17 months of the contract which is at RM99.00 x 17 months (Total: RM1683.00). You may expect to receive a cheque at your mailing address within a month’s time.

Hope the above helps to clarify your concern. Should you have any further queries, you may call our Contact Centre at 1800 821 123 or 123 from your Maxis Mobile for assistance.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,
Dobry Irdiahsamy
Customer Relations Unit
Customer Operations

Now, that’s efficiency (not Maxis).

January 2009: And on 3rd January, I finally got my refund cheque- a total of RM1683.00

And that basically sums up the Maxis Broadband Chronicle. The lesson learned is very clear- always direct your complaint to the higher authority if there’s one. In this case, it’s MCMC. If you are still being taiqi around, stop whatever you’ve been doing. Do this instead:

File a formal complaint to Maxis, obtain the complaint’s reference number and proceed to contact MCMC with the reference number. MCMC’s details here.

Of course, the next obvious lesson is Maxis is a company that will never put their customers ahead of their business activities. First they launched a product they are not prepared to improve. Then, their staff member, a Sandy Low, who’s in charge of the Maxis-HP Joint Promotion tells you that she does not meet customer face to face, and any complaints will have to go through the front-line customer service consultants. So much for accountability.

As for HP, I have totally no issue with their laptops, in fact I think the laptop is great. However, they should have known better who they are partnering with. When you are partnering with organizations such as Maxis, you must make sure you are well equipped to handle termination of services, such as providing the relevant information to the customers on how to go about terminating the service and getting their rightful refunds. Instead, what HP did was to ‘taiqi’ together with Maxis.

The only next sensible thing I can think of is to make sure I am ‘Maxis-free’, which means I should stop using any services from Maxis, lest I am being trapped in such a time-consuming dilemma again. Since Mobile Number Portability (MNP) took off, I am now switched over to Digi. It took me 3 months just to get an answer to a rightful refund, and even then, the answer didn’t come willingly from Maxis, but was forced down their throat by MCMC.

If you are reading this, you’ve been warned. I only hope you don’t have to go through this.

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