i shall not stop writing.

Ok... it has been a tiring tiring month so far, with the one and the baby taking turns to get sick, infecting me in the process and to top it all up, little jj got the chicken pox, which was very frustrating since she was just 2 weeks away from getting vaccinated. Nevertheless, I truly felt grateful as I realised that I shouldn't have questioned the benefits of breastmilk from the beginning since she didn't get any fever prior to the chicken pox... the only fever she got was triggered by the strong anti-viral medication she was taking, which was too much for her system and inducing vomitting after every feed, total loss of appetite for solids and hence, loss of weight.

In all those ruckus, I managed to slot assignments in between with the latest project requiring me to travel heavily. The only best part was that I was in control of the travel schedule and was given the authority to determine places the photographer and I, would visit. Thus, everything was in order. However, due to the many events happening almost simultaneously, this tough cookie may have crumbled a little from the stress.

And, if you must know, little jj has fully recovered and is back to being cheerful again. Yeayy!

Anyway, I am called to write on something that was sent to me and I hope I won't get my friend in trouble for touching on this topic. Sorry, I just can't help it....

See, I was tagged in a message in facebook by a friend on an opportunity to become a telco's 'ambassador' for their latest 'hot' device (trust me, I tried googling for the right adjective to the device and none are really an accurate description). 20 'ambassadors' will be selected for a video shoot where you will be talking on what you like about the device and which application is your favourite. That is not the only highlight for the invitation - for one, you must already be a registered user of that device with their special package and that's not all... for a highly reputable organisation that makes billions of Ringgit a year, the remuneration for any selected 'ambassador' is a surprise gift worth RM100... very contradicting don't you think?? - That you are an 'affluent' group who could afford those small luxuries yet be rewarded with something of such inferior value for the service you provide for them. Yeahhh... talking about their package IS a service for them, as you are basically helping them to promote what they are selling.

My question is, do they really know the true meaning of the word, Ambassador? Or are they just playing with an exaggerated meaning of the word, Testimonial?

Yet, they banked on the possible chance to anyone who is interested on becoming 'famous'. Aha... I should be an English teacher, right?

Like, can you be famous simply by a video shoot? Heck, it is not even a TV commercial. So, how is it do you think a person can be famous? Might as well they hire new actresses/actors who badly need an exposure.

No, seriously. This is a frank observation.

When I was working in the insurance industry back then, one big boss wanted me to organise a press conference. When I went to him to get further details on what I should shout about to the media, he said, we would have a pool of fund worth RM100,000 for any policy holders plagued by SARS. Being a responsible PR person, I went to my boss and voiced my honest concern as I didn't believe in the campaign. I mean, how can a company who's a member of a huge conglomerate who makes billions and billions of dollars a year would simply put aside such minute chunk of money for a SARS fund, a worrying epidemic at that time. With that point, we voiced it out to the CEO and he immediately upped the total to RM1million instead. We had a blast with the media for being the first responsible insurance company to come up with such good news.

In this instance with the above-mentioned telco, I thought the invitation was highly insincere and really proves to all of their lack of consideration for their subscribers and highly manipulative as well. Of course, if you are condoning this for a short exposure of possible fame, that is really up to you. For me, being a former subscriber who once thought of the telco as the best in the country, I am once again disappointed by such lame move.

I mean, before writing this, I did some homework on the telco and am thoroughly surprised that there are way too many negativity being written on this once highly-regarded brand. I had even made the one convert from his telco to this just so we could enjoy the family package and smooth network. But, you might have read before what happened and how frustrating it was with their customer service, making the one having the veto power to convert me to his former telco. I must say, that was a move that was truly helpful especially since I was able to keep my cari makan number.

You know that ad on TV earlier this year where a comedian had those first 3 digits on his t-shirt and the ad stating that those numbers are now on another telco? I believe that claim had the statistics to substantiate their declaration. I mean, with the one's family members alone, with 14 of us mobile users (inclusive of son-in-law and daughter-in-law), 4 of us have already converted to another telco, originally users of this above-mentioned telco. If family members alone shows such big statistics (it could be larger if my parents-in-law would use their phones not just for calls and smses), I am sure this telco should worry of their dwindling numbers. Of course, I believe they still have a big share among the younger market due to their cool prepaid branding and their 'it' factor, very important among teenagers and youths to relate to the brand. Still, I do believe another younger telco is slowly eating that share.

And I find it really amusing that they are still harping on that regional success that they achieved 3 years ago. Can I get the statistics of where they were listed 2 years ago? What about last year? This year?

Come on lah... come up with something that can redeem your self-worth. Hire some really responsible people, and listen to your customers' opinion.

This campaign is considered a very important tool for them since they need to display how their customers are very happy with what they are offering. So, is that the only best reward you can give to your happy customers?

But, as much as it sounds truly lame to me, I do not own such device and I probably do not understand the hu-ha that comes with owning it. Heck, who knows, them users are probably even happy to do it for free! Hehe...

Well, I am just writing out my thoughts.

So… to those who’ve visited the one’s blog is aware of our annoyance with our current telco. Although the one has always told me how much he thinks maxis sucks before he switched to celcom a few years back, I, on the other hand thinks celcom’s customer service sucks big time before I switched to maxis a long time back.

But, with my recent activity with maxis, their offer for a supplementary line was so irresistible since we did think of using the same telco to have more savings for our calls. Hence, I managed to persuade the one into converting back to maxis since I didn’t want to change my number as it is my ‘cari makan’ number.

I must mention that before the supplementary line offer, I did experience some stupid glitch with their customer service. It was when I left my job and wanted to convert my corporate line to an individual account.

Back then before my number was converted to corporate line, the billing address was to my parents’ home and I have filled all the necessary applications to change my billing address to my current one. And, they charge me a deposit as it is deemed as a new account. All that should be simple and easy, right??... especially since my friend, Waty, supervised the customer service rep at the Taman Tun branch each time she wasn’t sure. At that time, I thought that they haven’t trained their customer service frontliners right as there are so many things that they do not know and needed to refer to their supervisors every once in awhile. But, since everything seemed okay, I left the maxis center not suspecting anything amiss.

A week after that I got such a shock when my mom passed me this mail I got from maxis, sent to her home. But that wasn’t my biggest irritation… what irked me so much was not only did they not key in my current address but they also addressed me as Chief Inspector Tough Cookie. Like helooo… mana dapat Chief Inspector, I seriously cannot comprehend.

I wrote in a complaint to them thru their online form and a customer service operator called me later that day apologising and told me that all are already in order.

I mean, this is so unnecessary!

When we got the supplementary line offer from their tele-sales rep, everything seemed to be in order. We got the SIM card within a couple of days and although I was a little skeptical, the one was unsuspecting and immediately disconnected his Celcom line. Well… that became an issue because when we called maxis customer service, the person on the other line didn’t even know that sales for supplementary line could be done online and thought I was joking! He questioned me on the process and I had to tell him what the tele-sales guy told me 2 days before. Imagine… I had to practically ‘teach’ him what he’s supposed to do because I was only supposed to call to activate the SIM card.


His supervisor had to call me for verifications and promised that the line would be activated within 1 hour.

I felt so sorry for persuading the one to convert to maxis as we had to make numerous calls in probably 3-4 hours before the line was actually activated.

Thus, from then on, I started to think that maxis is kinda disappointing. Yup, their coverage and plans may be the best but their customer service sucks balls. Sucks like hell, I tell you. That reminded me when a friend of mine got robbed and reporting to maxis customer service was such a chore… imagine how stressful that could be…

Like press 1 for English… press bla bla bla, then press this, then press that and then you get the automated reply – your calls are important to us… please hold on as our customer service rep are busy at this moment… and you get that prompt repeated over and over again while you’re busy trying to call your banks to report the stolen credit cards and ATM cards. Then, when their customer service rep finally answers your call, they pass you here and there because stolen phones and barring of line is not automatically in their tele-option. And they ask you stupid questions like how did it happen and where did it happen when all they should do was to immediately bar the SIM card, assure the caller that everything should be okay and inform them how they could get a new SIM card.

On the 2nd day of Raya while shopping at Sunway Pyramid, the one’s eye caught on the maxis center which was open. He asked this guy who looked like the person in charge whether he could get a separate bill with his name on it although he was holding a supplementary line under my account as his company does not allow any claims without his name on the bill. The guy said it is not possible and that we should create a new account with him as the main account holder and moi holding the supplementary line. That would involve advanced payment of 1 month package that we’re paying and additional RM100 for activation of ‘new’ account which will be billed in our next statement.

The customer service rep looked so confident with what she was supposed to do, made the necessary copies of our identity cards, got us both to sign on 1 new form and explained to us that she would put my number as supplementary. I asked her if there are anything else and she said all is well and done. Of course, before all that, I had warned the one that I knew something would go wrong.

And I was so right about my perception of maxis’ customer service. They suck.

Apparently, they are now billing us separately ie. no supplementary benefits like the ones we enjoyed before the change but but… my name was listed as supplementary account.

Knowing the one, he was so baik when he called their customer service. Did the things he had to do and even went to maxis KLCC. It was so bad that one customer service tele-rep had to call us after a few days, gave us a reference number and said that the problem will be attended to within 48 hours. Like come on… the issue is so easy… to just converge our numbers into one account instead of separately! The one kept pointing out that it wasn’t our fault because how could a supplementary line be billed separately… which means, the girl at Sunway’s center did not make the change correctly.

When the Sunway center refused to call us back and told the customer service tele-rep that they do not have proof of our visit to the center, that was I think, the last straw for the very patient the one. They advised that we go back to them and the one was so annoyed that they would make us go thru so much trouble just to correct this problem when it was their fault and that they could easily correct online.

I told the one that we should confront those incompetent ignorant stupid people and make a scene just like I did when we were sold a faulty nokia phone months ago (they refused to replace it although they admitted it was their fault). After that scene, and a letter to the Malay Mail, they quickly replaced that phone. I mean, our rights as customer sucks in this country. We have to make so much noise and make a scene in order to be taken seriously.

The one didn’t agree with me because it’ll take so much effort to go to Sunway as we need to get the baby ready, the hassle of finding parking space, paying for parking bla bla bla and we’re not even sure if the problem would be rectified efficiently.

So, he decided to switch back to Celcom since we could now still use the same number. Actually, we were seriously considering Digi but since they lack 3G coverage, that option was KIVied.

The story didn’t end there as the application to switch to Celcom was rejected since the billing problem with maxis wasn’t corrected. And then… what happened made me so proud of the one. The always ‘nice guy’ character in him was totally gone when he spoke to another maxis’ customer service tele-rep for the last time… it took a good 50 minutes to explain to the supervisor maxis sucks big time and the stupid mistake they make and pinning on the customers for their fucked-upness. The thing was, the supervisor couldn’t even see their mistake until the one questioned her whether it is possible for a supplementary line to be a separate account. That got to her on how stupid it sounded and promised that she’d look into it with the assurance that we do not have to go to Sunway center.

Yesterday, they rectified the problem. Finally! If I weren’t so busy with the baby, I would definitely already let the media know about this. Coming from such a reputable telco, one would never think their customer service sucks big time.


After all this cerita panjang… we’re both officially, on Celcom.