Tuesday 19 June 2007

TM scam?

I received a very mysterious telephone call on my fixed landline this morning. A Malay woman wanted to speak to me. As usual, the Malays will mispronounce my name as Sooooon instead of Sun, but that is another matter.

She claimed to be from TM (Telekom Malaysia) and she had a telephony package to offer me. She claimed that TM was offering me a RM60 package and wanted to know how much was my monthly telephone bill.

So, I casually asked her to speak to me in English. Shouldn't be difficult for anyone trained in tele-sales, right?

Wrong! She panicked, said simply: "Ahh...." and without any more words - much less an apology - put down the phone.

Issay, issay, issay ... is this a telephone scam on fixed landlines or what? I've just shot off an email to TM to make some enquiries:

1. Is there really a RM60 package from TM?
2. Is TM really carrying out a telephony promotion?
3. If so, does TM have staff trained in speaking in English?
4. Regardless of the language, are TM's staff properly trained to be polite?
5. Is this a scam that I should be aware of?

I'll be eagerly awaiting a reply from TM but in the meantime, I think I'll give their customer care a telephone call too. Don't really have much confidence about TM's ability to reply to people's emails.

UPDATE 1: Seems that I shouldn't be so confident about speaking to TM's customer service staff either. I dialled 100 and after selecting all those voice menus to speak to one of their staff, all I got repeatedly was a voice message telling me: "All our customer service staff are busy. Please hold..." or words to that effect.

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