Tuesday, May 29, 2007

ARE WE VICTIMS OF GOVERNMENT SPONSORED CHEATS?

HANTU LAUT

Have you ever felt cheated or worse still cheated by your own government. Have you ever wanted to hit back but realized you wouldn't have a chance and you would just be hitting your head against a brick wall.

Many of us don't even know that we are being "rip-off", and worse still, sponsored by our very own government.Most of the culprits in the scams are so called GLC(Government Linked Companies) run by Managers with civil servant mentalities.These are half baked executives promoted to a level of incompetence and dread to hear the word "competition".Why compete if the government can give you the rights to monopolize, price fixing, short changing and the rights to screw your customers as and when you wish.

Let us start with the biggest crook of the lots, TMNet.How many of you are happy with your Streamyx? Are you getting what you are paying for? Can you play your streaming videos without the damned thing buffering all the time. I bought a package that should give me a speed of 1Mbps which should be more than enough to browse the net comfortably and faster download and upload.What did I get? A pain in the neck and fucking useless piece of crap.

I called TMNet and complained and they sent two technicians, looked as if they just came out of Gua Musang, to carry out inspection.One joker hooked up his machine which looked like a laptop and press some keys.He than called me "Abang, ini speed OK lah, you tengok sini"

He showed me some metering device on the laptop which, to my surprise, actually showed the correct speed.I called him to come over to my computer and open a page from"YouTube" and played a video and without fail the video failed to play properly.I questioned him why he said ok and he said he only said so because the machine said so. Great, how can you argue, machines don't make mistake, only humans do.I have called TMNet not less than three times and they were still unable to fix the problem.

I have now resigned to the fact that I have been cheated and there was nothing I could do other than to terminate the service which again was a problem because of my contractual obligation to use it for minimum of one year.You see what I mean they really know how to screw you, and screw you hard.What puzzled me was the type of equipment they used to measure the speed.Was it adjusted to show a false reading?

This country have only one fixed line operator.The monopoly have made Telecom Malaysia complacent, arrogant and slow to upgrade the facilities and services.Just drive over the causeway and see the type of broadband they have.

Most GLCs are run by people who took no pride in their job. Lack of competition, government protection and to certain extent, the NEP, have made the companies totally inefficient.They make huge profits every year at the expense of the Malaysian consumers.

The other day I read in the newspaper that there are 15 millions cellular phones users in the country.Amazing, even the most developed country don't have that kind of ratio.This is another area where costumers get "rip-off".Make a phone call and there was no response from the other party and you get charged for it.Line engaged you get charged.Mysterious phone calls from you to you friend which you have never made, you get charged.

About three months ago my wife got a "Mesra Card" from Petronas which we used to purchase fuel for our cars and get bonus points. You would never imagine that even thing like this some people are prepared to cheat.One day we checked our bonus point using the Mesra website and we found, to our disgust, some of our bigger purchases of RM50-100 were not registered even though we have given the card to the cashiers to swipe.Two emails to Petronas to complain received no reply.A friend told me that some cashiers at some of Petronas kiosks are stealing bonus points from customers by swiping their own and their friends' cards instead of the customers.Would you believe this? So, if this is true, next time you fill up, watch them closely.

There were many instances where government knowingly allowed GLCs and other private businesses to conduct their business unscrupulously. Our consumers associations are too lame to make an impact and influent any changes.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree with you on the monopoly of the Telekom Malaysia had over us all these years had make them seeking profit ruthlessly using unthinkable method.

Example. we had been cheated out to sign up to Lets Talk by saying that they from Telekom, they just see this name and want to tell you that we can save 108 every month. The shit thing is they dont tell that we had to pay 68 ringgit each month in order to get that kind of saving.

so tell me why it easy to sign up in phone but it is not easy to remove that package and had to deal with long birokrasi such as pay fines to the unsigned contract which dealt over the phone.

Until now the problem is not settled.