Open Letter to Minister Fahmi Fadzil

Dear Minister Fahmi Fadzil,

I urge you to seriously look into the way telecommunication companies are "locking" customers down with a two- or three-year contract, and imposing their own lopsided terms and conditions. 

I believe over the years, for whatever reasons, the authorities have failed to regulate the telcos in the same way that Bank Negara is known to regulate the banking and insurance industries. As a result, subscribers find themselves always on the losing end when dealing with the telcos. 

My experience with one telco will probably be the same with other telcos for other subscribers. Unless the Ministry puts its foot down on these telcos, they will continue to introduce contract after contract, and impose their own terms and conditions that subscribers are often left with no choice but to sign on the dotted line.

Allow me to elaborate. I have been a subscriber of Maxis for more than 25 years after switching from Celcom. It was easy back then, and I was able to ask to maintain the same number except for the first three digits.

Later the telcos started making it extremely difficult to port out. It will often mean having no phone line for a few days, but thankfully, I believe after the authorities intervened, we can seamless port out. However, telcos will still try to impose deterrents for people to port out as I will explain shortly.

Let me tell you my journey with the telco for the past 12 months. Of late, I have found Maxis' services (its phone line, mobile data plan and fibre broadband) to be very poor. 

1) Despite subscribing to 300 MBPS broadband fibre, I have been experiencing frequent intermittent disruption of both its 5G and 2.4G broadband services for the past 12 months, with speeds going as low as 10mbps or below. Maxis' technicians had to come to the house to check, but the same problem recurred. 

2) Because of the intermittent disruption, I thought that I would probably need to upgrade my mobile data plan from 4G to 5G in order to support the family usage via Hotspot. The Plan 98 (RM98) was upgraded to Plan 109 at the click of a link provided.

Even having to pay an additional of RM10 for the 5G data plan, to my horror, I discovered that in my area, I am on 4G for most of the time. There is no cooling off period and even though I requested to revert to 4G, Maxis told me that  the plan no longer exists. 

Despite repeatedly telling them and the Malaysia Communication and Multimedia Commission that I upgraded to a 5G mobile data plan because I was experiencing frequent intermittent disruption with the broadband fibre network, the issue is still unresolved. 

As a matter of fact, because I work from home where I am supposed to have a 5G network with 300 MBPS package, I hardly depend on the mobile data plan. At a time when most of us are trying to cut down on our expenses upon reaching senior citizen age, I feel upset having to continue with the 5G data service that is almost non-existent!

3) At the same time because I took on their Zerolution plan where I am tied down to Maxis for another nine months, until July 25, 2025. Therefore, if I were to port out of the Maxis phone line and go for a cheaper data plan of RM40 compared to RM108 every month, I would have to pay a penalty charge, which is understandably a deterrent. 

I am sure Maxis will also impose other conditions that I have to comply with just like what they did to me when I switched the Broadband fibre service from Maxis to Unifi.

4) For my Broadband, they told me that the frequent intermittent disruption could be due to the router and to change the router, I would be tied down to another two years contract. 

Contracts are what most telcos use to tie subscribers down. Subscribers would have to pay a penalty if they exit the plan. After some 12 months of waiting for a solution, I finally decided enough is enough. I switched my broadband fibre plan to Unifi this week.

Now, I am getting a new router and modem in a combo set for free when Unifi carried out the installation today. I also have the option of going back to 100 MBPS and making a saving of RM60 per month, or a hefty sum of RM720 a year! But, here again, I am tied down to a two-year contract with Unifi. Hopefully, everything works out well and we do not encounter service disruption for the broadband service.

While signing with Unifi, it was just giving my Identity Card and putting a thumbprint. I only realised that I was not given a copy of the contract to read and for most laymen, reading through a contract written with legal jargons is a tedious process especially with the fine prints.

Companies are capitalising this; therefore, I urge your Ministry to vet through all the contracts to make sure that ordinary subscribers are not being short-changed.

When I decided to transfer the Broadband Fibre package from Maxis to Unifi, I had to pay the final bill, which I did on October 22, 2024, a day after it was sent to me. 

Yet, I was told to pay an additional one-month fee for the broadband (RM149) and fill up the form for transfer within two hours after the email is sent out to me; otherwise, the link would expire and I would have to submit the transfer form at only certain designated Maxis outlets. 

Telcos always make it easy for us to upgrade the service, at the click of the button, but put many hurdles for us to switch to other telcos or terminate the services. Is this fair?

Because of their short deadline, my children had to wait for me at the restaurant just in order for me to fill up the form and submit an image of my Identity Card after more than five attempts! We were not told how to make the additional payment, and I had to guess using Maxis App would be the only best resort.

If there is a surplus after one month, Maxis will not return the money to me despite my request, but it will be used to offset the phone bill. What I do not like is telcos dictating their own terms and conditions, while we as subscribers are made to suffer at their whims and fancies, if I may put it.

It is time for your ministry to do something to stop all the telcos from using binding contracts to tie down their subscribers. Attractive as them may be, but these contracts can be relatively unfair to subscribers. 

The ministry should set the policy that all existing contracts should be obsoleted so that subscribers are allowed to port in and port out easily if they find the services by the existing telco to be poor. 

After all, no one would risk switching the telco if the telco is providing a good service. Telcos must learn to compete with better services and packages they offer, instead of tying down subscribers with their contracts. 

Thank you.