Well, I crossed swords with Maxis again. It may be me but I think they seriously need to re-think and retrain their staff with respect to customer relations.

Maxis are very, very good at publicising and giving out bumpf on their services, but they are absolutely atrocious and defensive you ask for details. Or, you could say, they do a very good job of hiding the details that matter and may turn people away from using their services.

A lot of their information is on their website, I have to say (although it wasn't there the first time I tried to find this stuff a few months ago). For example, they have local call charges and also international call charges as well as a very informative page on charge areas and how they work.

"So what's the problem?", you might ask. I asked a very simple question: How much does it cost to send and receive SMS's to and from Malaysia when I am abroad?

The first time I asked this was sometime in December 2002. The lady behind the counter said that it depended on which countries I was in. OK, so I gave her a list. She said that she couldn't find them out right away and that she'd get back to me with the details.

She didn't.

The next time I went was early this month (Feb 2003). I met another lady at Maxis and explained to her my situation. This time, she called me back three days later and gave me the prices.

Today I went to activate the IDD account, and I mentioned to the lady behind the counter that it was really difficult to get the prices. She explained that Maxis Malaysia had no control over the charges and that it was up to the individual telco provider and that the rates changed over time, which was not what I was expecting.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect Maxis to be able to publish these prices, even if they are subject to change. To be told that was the only reason, really, that they didn't do it was because they couldn't be bothered to update the prices regularly is galling. I expect to know how much something costs before I buy it. Where else on the planet when you ask how much something costs, the answer is "I'm sorry, we're not sure, we won't even give you an estimate, you'll just have to buy it first and see what you're billed later".