Many of us now are using internet from home, if it is not just for entertainment, we need to have it for work related, research for assignment, or maybe for your own business. Even standard school students were given tasks to do research from internet. You cannot let your 9 years old girl go to cyber cafe to do their own Google right. The PC there might not set as Safe Search mode. So better to subscribe for your own internet at home.

However using internet at home is a painful. We are very familiar with this “our internet bandwidth/connection/signal quality is dependent on best effort basis“. What is the basic of “best effort basis”? Nobody defines this. Whenever we made a complaint to the service provide, that will be their standard answer.

So how do we overcome this? With proper complaint steps and data, you probably could save your money.

Early termination without penalty

Usually if you subscribe for a new package, you will have to pay some deposit with a certain contract period, 12 or 24 months. You will be given a grace period, normally 1 week to try the internet service, and you could get back your deposit and without penalty imposed if you return their devices and terminate the package within that grace period. However if you are not satisfied with the service and want to terminate after that, your deposit will not be returned back to you or maybe you need to pay some penalty. This will double your frustration.

How my friend did was, before he terminate the internet service, the made few official complaint via email to the service provider on the low bandwidth or service quality. At some point, he carbon copy (cc) the email to SKMM to show that he is serious about the issue. After few round of communications, he manage to terminate his internet service within the contract period and get back his deposit.

Waiver or rebate on your bill

This actually was happened to myself. I’ve subscribed with new service provider in Nov last year. As usual, I’m given the 1 week grace period and everything goes well during the 1 week. After that, I was still checking the speed test to monitor service level that I’m receiving, but the result is unacceptable. On average, my internet bandwidth is only around 10-25% from what I’m paying for. So I compiled few days of data and submitted complaint to the service provider. As mentioned earlier, they come back to me with their standard answer saying “…..best effort basis…bla, bla, bla” and with few troubleshooting steps. When I first see it, it was a long steps but actually can be finished within 30 mins. I tried all steps but the result still the same. Again, after few round of emails, and since they can’t resolve the problem immediately and knowing that “service provider is committed to ensuring customers receive the best broadband performance” based on the T&C, I requested for a rebate to my bill based on the actual service level that I recieved. Without involving SKMM, in few days, they approved my request and I only paid RM6.00 for the last month bill. Good deal right?

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