As local telcos have begin to offer competitive mobile plans with huge data quota at affordable prices, it would seem that Maxis has done nothing to retaliate the competition, but rather the telco has emphasized on its wider coverage and better 4G LTE speeds than its competition to explain its market position. However, it would seem that such a marketing message is no longer viable, as a Lowyat.NET forum user jackson5759 posted about a friend being counter offered with an unlimited call plan with 5GB data at RM68/month when his friend was about to port out from the telco, a quick check on the telco’s MaxisONE plan reveals that in order to have such benefits, a user has to pay RM158/month (excluding GST), a staggering 120% more expensive than the offered price.
You may have read of an exaggerated Maxis save offer in the lowyat.net forum that has been circulating recently when it…
Posted by Maxis on Sunday, 3 April 2016
The company’s social media executive or public relations has taken the case up to social media, disclaiming the existence of such offer to existing customers, while also admitting at the same time that the cheaper and higher quota MaxisONE plan is only available to customers of East Malaysia, stating that the introductory offer is made available for users to enjoy the expansion of the telco’s network in Sabah and Sarawak, it eventually led to the lashes by netizens and most of them being loyal customers that have been with the telco for at least 10 years. Hence, things aren’t looking too good and positive in the comments section.
Local tech site Malaysian Wireless reported on February this year that Maxis has lost over 370K subscribers in 4Q15, the company has admitted this due to impact from price-focused competition, other telcos such as Celcom, Digi and U Mobile have all offered competitive postpaid plans with unlimited calls and at least 7GB of quota that starts as low as RM70/month, despite realizing this we assume Maxis has kept its pricing firm to avoid overloading its network as the increase in data quota with reduced price would probably affect its network quality. However, one can also disagree such an act as telcos should always be upgrading its network coverage and reducing prices with the increasing demand of data services.
The telco’s social media team might have been reckless by annoying netizens with this particular sentence: ‘Sometimes Maxis uses offers to stimulate trial of new services. Every now and then we also offer special deals to get our customers to switch in their family members as Maxis customers or to extend a contract.’, this is particularly offensive to those who have been with the telco for a decade despite not having a contract with the telco, many users have expressed frustration to port out of the telco the soonest when their contract ends, Maxis may want to take extra precautions from now on in communicating with its customers on this. At this time of writing, KLGadgetGuy has reached out to Maxis for a statement.
SOURCE: Maxis (Facebook), Lowyat.NET Forum
