Langkawi Gazette

Langkawi: TM Net again

Mark: 11 Dec. 2009

The Langkawi Gazette Office in Kisap had no access to the Internet for 10 days

Since last Thursday 3rd of Dec. we experienced problems with the TM Net Internet connection. The connection first slowed down – then dropped out completely. We logged a complaint and got a report No. the same day (as we were pretty insisting). Despite many phone calls nothing happened for the first 4 days...

Then the Internet came up to normal – until we lost the phone line about half an hour later. Several technicians then tried to help – and the phone line was up again two days later – but now the Internet was down again. And from there they did not manage to repair it until today, 11th December, noon - 10 days after we logged our problem.

I want to make it very clear, that all the individual persons involved were very friendly, tried to help us and are not to blame. Yes – it would be handy if the Telecom technicians could speak one or two words English…. But this was not of crucial importance in this disaster and technically they did understand what they faced and had to do. This also is the case for Mr. Novak from the TM Net, who even told me, that I could go to the TM Point and ask for a reduction of my bill for the current month…

But this said, the TM Net and Telecom operations as a whole are obviously not up to the task in regard to several aspects.

The frustration starts, when trying to log a complaint and getting a Report No – which is the only way to force TM Net to actually DO something about your Streamyx  problem.

For this one dials No 100.
This number is free of charge.
After dialing several other numbers – one normally has to wait quite some time until there is a person free to speak with you.
The questions one is then asked are lengthy and often completely unnecessary. At one point, after telling my user name and password, acknowledging my phone No and my mobile phone No, I was even asked for my personal  Passport No.. This is when I normally start to shout…After this completely idiotic procedure is over,  Different operators are asking for different things, like:  disconnect the Splinter, disconnect the Ethernet Switch, unplug the router and plug it in again after 10 seconds (and we both pray that it will be ok) – etc. etc. with no end. Then I am sometimes told: ok we reset your account, please phone us back in ten minutes if not ok. Of course it was never ok, and of course you never get the same operator back – so you have to start at the beginning again. Dealing with the customer service of TM Net is the single most frustrating thing I have to face here in Malaysia.

This time again it looked that the technical problems were not only at my place – but others in Langkawi did face the same problem. (I spoke with two of my friends who had the same problems at the same time). But instead of acknowledging this, the operator of TM Net went through this random, every time changing stupid procedure ‘to make sure the problem was not on my site’.

So my complaints about TM Net - after 4 years of experience with them and with 6 TM Net technical breakdowns this year alone - are well founded and clear:

1)  It looks to me that the operators of TM Net (No. 100) – have the order to do everything possible not give out a Report No – so not to force the company to do anything about your problem.
This attitude is not very helpful to say the least.

2) The next thing is, that TM Net has officially 48 hours within which they have to start reacting to a complaint that got a report No. These 48 hours are ‘work day’ hours, which means, when you are unlucky enough to have problems on a Thursday evening, the Friday will not count and they have to start to react Monday only. Which is precisely what they will do. This response time is too long.

Our problems with TM Net are reoccurring with great reliability, several times a year, and there seems to be 2 different causes:

3) The Phone lines used by TM Net. (This is a Telecom Problem – but the two companies are anyway one and the same…). The quality of the phone lines – at least at my place in Kisap– is obviously not up to the task. Often there is a scratching noise, and difficulties are to be expected after heavy rain. This time our phone line did break down – in the middle of our problems with TM Net. We were told, that the reason was ‘corrosion on a plug’.

4) The technical material of TM Net in the ‘sub stations’ seems also to be of too low a quality and has obviously a too big failure rate. This time it was again a ‘card’ that ceased to function properly.

And finally,
5) there seems to be a problem with communication within the TM Net and between the TM Net and Telecom.
On Thursday, after no Internet for one week and no phone line for nearly 3 days – we got a call from a technician asking us, if we had any problems…. After 10 days of no Internet we reached a Supervisor (after yelling at the operator) and the Supervisor – after looking at our report No. records – asked us , if we had seen any technician from TM Net yet….

Our real problem is only one thing: that there is no alternative to the TM Net.

And this seems to be the real problem. As they have no competition, they do not have enough pressure to perform.
Malaysia deserves better than that.

The ‘wireless broadband’ (Maxi) can not be received at my location – and even if it would work here, it would be too slow - despite all the promotional fuss about higher speed than the TM Net. (We have tried it out at an other place, and it is clearly slower.) And the other fact about wireless broadband, which they do not tell you is: it works similar to the Astro – over satellite (and the signal is then locally redistributed) – and so, a heavy rain is enough to interrupt the connection completely. Which makes several interruptions per day in the rainy season. Not really business friendly.

As far as I know and from the response I get, my frustrating experience with TM Net is shared by many business men on Langkawi. But as we are not used here to say anything negative about anybody – they have decided to keep quiet and have asked me not to name them.

If TM Net wants to reply to this article they are welcome and I will publish their reply in full.

Mark

Picture from: http://zuraidin.blogspot.com/2008/06/streamyx-sucks-big-time.html