Lousy customer services

Johanna & I have moved in to this house since 7 February.

Ever since, we still have the following unresolved problems.

• Faulty bed - no holes were drilled on one of the piece where there were supposed to be 3
  
• No Internet broadband yet due to the delay in the provider in contacting us
  
• LCD TV that can't seem to change source to PC Input so that I can connect my laptop to it

Faulty Bed

We bought the bed from a Fantastic Furniture. The furniture are definitely good in terms of look and price. They are all made in Malaysia. Unfortunately, the quality is quite poor - not only the material but how the pieces are packaged. The quality of the material is of course expected given the price. But the packaging is somewhat disappointing. One piece of our bed is suppose to have 3 holes drilled into it but the holes are missing. Two other holes on two other pieces are in the wrong order. It took the furniture shop more than one week to send over a staff to inspect the pieces and until now we haven't heard from them about delivering us the replacement. The reason given was 'stock has yet to arrive from Sydney'.

Internet Broadband

Internet is always a priority for us. We were quite appalled to find out the in Australia, broadband packages start off with around 400MB of monthly bandwidth, some with maximum of only 2GB! For a 400MB 'deal', the cost is $30 per month. This is really outrageous! Not even enough to check e-mail and read news.

The first day after we moved in, I immediately registered for one of the rare high bandwidth services provided by iiNET. The product is an award-winning product called Naked DSL, meaning I won't need to register for a separate phone line as iiNET will not require me to do so. After the registration, the only thing I received so far is an e-mail with my customer ID stating that my service will be provided within the next 10 to 20 days. Ever since I haven't heard from them and it has already been more than 15 days after my registration. The logical thing is to call them up. And so I tried only to be greeted by the automated service informing me that they are suffering from higher than usual number of calls and I can expect to be connected in 30 minutes, no matter what time of the day I called (attempts so far, 8am, 1am, 1pm). Right now I don't even know whether this company will really contact me, other than sending me their monthly newsletter. Because of this I have not been updating my Flickr for a long time as one upload will be more than 1GB usually. Jo & I are depending on our mobile broadband service provided by 3 with only 2GB monthly limit. So far 3's service has been good, both for phone and Internet, unlike Optus where we need to wait for more than 30 minutes to get connected to the customer service only to end up with a rude, unhelpful Indian with a difficult to understand accent on the other end.

LCD TV

We've bought a Samsung LA32R81BD TV on the 11th. I was so excited to connect it to my Dell 640m laptops. But after more than 2 weeks posting my problem on Internet forums, calling support, I still can't choose the PC Input in the source list of my TV even though my laptop can detect the TV as a monitor. It is also extremely difficult to contact Samsung customer service. My first e-mail (with product serial number) was ignored, the second one was replied but telling me to call the support helpline. Of course the reason I e-mailed them is because it is impossible to get through to them by calling the helpline. Eventually I managed to get through one morning by calling at 8.30am when the helpline starts operating, only to be told to contact one of the service agents. I tried calling the number provided to the service agent and the whole process of being put on hold started again. In the end I had to give up again. The worst thing is while being kept on hold, this message kept on being repeated.

We know your time is valuable. We will try our very best to connect you shortly.

Just get more people in the call centre! This applies to all other Australian customer service we've experienced except for 3. But 3 is not perfect either. In my latest phone + mobile broadband bill, I was charged more than $300 for cancellation fee, i.e. breaking my mobile broadband contract. I never cancel my contract in the first place. In fact I'm using the service now to post this blog. The good thing is it's not difficult to call them. I was told that their IT systems is F-up and many people have reported the same problem. Sigh.

No doubt it is very relaxing to work in this lovely country. But everyone is probably relaxing too much to provide good services.

From this experience I've learnt to appreciate Malaysia's tele customer service. It is so easy to call Maybank, Maxis and even Astro. In the past Astro has poor reputation for being uncontactable. But they've come a long way ever since.