Unveil

When TM and Streamyx meets me

// July 20th, 2007 // Unveil

CYBERJAYA: Peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic is choking up local broadband lines with 20% of users utilising 80% of the total bandwidth, according to Internet service provider (ISP) TM Net Sdn Bhd. Dr Fadhullah Suhaimi Abdul Malek, general manager of TM Net’s corporate and strategy services, said “As the number of local broadband subscribers increases, more users are expected to use P2P applications such as Kazaa and BitTorrent to transfer files online.  Such applications are often left on all day so they use much more bandwidth compared to users who merely use the Internet to surf or chat.  Other countries with high broadband penetration also faced similar problems because broadband users have a tendency to abuse bandwidth. We are not against our customers using P2P.  However, it is an unfair situation which needs to be addressed, as we cannot upgrade our infrastructure (merely) for the benefit of the minority.”  [Source: TM Net: P2P traffic clogging broadband]

What a good way to deny all allegation made on slow bandwidth.  Well TM, you advertised unlimited data transfer and usage time and we signed up on that.  Now that you couldn’t deliver what you promised, admit it, do something about it and don’t put the blame on us for sucking up all the bandwidth.  Abusing the bandwidth you say?  What is there to abuse when it’s ours to use?  It’s not a free service we are using, we are paying for it, remember?  Technology is about improving and moving forward in order to make today’s world an obsolete world to live in.

Furthermore, this company really needs to upgrade their support people.  These guys in support are either untrained or not qualified at all.  Whatever questions I popped out at them, the first and foremost or maybe the only thing that they were taught, is to tell you to switch of all powers and disconnect all cables connecting to your modem and router, wait for 10 minutes, and then try reconnecting.  If that didn’t work, please call back.  Sure enough I will have to call back telling them that their excellent advice didn’t work.  Next, you will be told to recheck your login details, and some DNS settings and yada yada yada.  By the end of the day, if nothing fruitful comes out of it, they will have their technician over to fix things up.  Perfect, finally someone will be here to fix my connection, in like 5 days?

Feeling frustrated and nowhere to turn to, I resolve to the most practical and reliable support in the world.  Community forums and search engines via the most reliable 56k connection.  Within the time span of an hour, I managed to go online on my Streamyx.  It seems that the problem lies within the configuration of my modem where I would need to change the VCI value.

Knowing where my problem lies, I decided to give TM support a call to further test their level of usefulness.  I told them the problem could be the VCI value being incorrect.  No matter how I argued, all they could do or were taught to do is to tell all their customers to stick with default settings.  HELL, IT WAS THE DEFAULT SETTINGS THAT GOT ME CALLING YOU PEOPLE!  Don’t teach me what to do unless you know what to do.  In the end of the day, I certify them useless.

In a survey done among all my friends and colleagues, the result shows that 90% of them resolved in online troubleshooting and solving matters pertaining to Streamyx.  The remaining 10% got their problem solved through TM because of faulty telephone lines and wiring issue.  In general, TM support staffs are only good when there is a faulty telephone line or wiring that needs to be changed or repaired.

You excelled because you monopolised.