It's The Principle Of The Thing

Every time we look at our Maxis bill, we get a mild headache. Honestly, so what if we took Accountings as an added subject for SPM? SPM Accountings was very clear cut, with this total on this debit column matching up with this credit total on this credit column in this other accounts. Maxis's bill, on the other hand, isn't so easy, even when our bill is itemized.

We recently decided to take up their iData Plan, 500mb for RM50 every month, and this being the first bill with the data plan charges we had to check to make sure that everything was okay and we weren't being overcharged or something. Whatmore with the bill totaling three times our usual average under the Value 50 plan, we definitely needed to check the bill for discrepencies.

After a bit of scribbling with a pencil on the bill with arrows pointing from where a total ends up elsewhere we had a fair few question marks to deal with. Like:

1. How did our 5% service charge jumped from RM2.50 (5% of RM50) to RM3.23? Why such an odd value? (This we called a second time because we forgot to mention about it on the first, and it was justified, luckily. Good customer service where agent said he would check and call back in half an hour, and he did.)

2. Why, on our Maxis Mobile Internet charges, after paying RM50 for 500mb of internet data, does the rebate not cover everything and that we still have to pay 2 sen? Yes well it's ONLY 2 sen but if we've already paid RM50 and we've not overshot the limit, why are you still asking us to pay???

3. What is this 'Internet 2kb: RM0.73' that we are being charged for when we were in Sporeland? We did not go online using our L'Amour, nor did we receive nor send any picture messages during our entire time in Sporeland. How came about this internet charge?

4. In our previous bill before we started some serious mobile internet usage, there's also always been some Maxis Mobile Internet charges. Less than a ringgit but there's always that. We just never bothered about it before because at times we did go online using WAP, or we assumed that it's a slight service charge for being able to send picture messages. But since we're on a roll to complain about the nitpicking ways Maxis tries to leech our cash, we might as well bring the subject up to find out what, exactly, are we being charged for.

It's not as if they were charging us exorbitantly and expecting us not to notice. It's not as if we can't pay the little bit they put on here and there. It's, WHY THE HELL should we pay for you to indulge in crooked and dishonest ways?!

So we jot down the few questions to ask, and we called 123 and tapped our way till we got a customer service agent on the line to speak with. Once we got someone on the line, we got him to open up our bill and directed him for question 2.

You can click to enlarge, but generally we've only used 51mb out of our 500mb, and before they rebated us the amount, they bloody rounded down the figure. Hence making us pay another 2 sen. Well, we sure didn't sign up for RM50.02 for 500mb data per month as we remember. So customer service agent (CSA) looks at our bill, thinks for a while, and goes...

CSA: Oh sir, that's because your data charges is prorated, so the 2 sen is excess.
Janvier: Is that so? Then please tell us how much our prorated rebate is, because our data usage so far is only about 51mb, which is about some 10%, and we're sure our prorated rebate should be more than 10%.
CSA: Er.....hold on ya sir.
Janvier: We think what happened is that your billing system rounded down the rebate.
CSA: Uh, yes sir you're right.
Janvier: Go find out what happened.

To his credit the CSA subscribed to 'The Customer Is Always Right' motto, and after that shot in the dark about our charges being prorated, he listened to the rest of our grievances and we told him to call back tomorrow with answers. Since it's not his fault directly we shall give him time to get back to us with answers rather than throw an embarassing and idiotic tantrum a la Bad Tempered Crazy Indian Girl & Patronizing Misguided Indian Mum vs Astro Customer Service.

Ugh. Imagine if we have to harangue them every month.