KUALA LUMPUR: The Communications and Multimedia Consumer Forum of Malaysia (CFM) is renewing its call for compensation guidelines to be drawn up to protect consumers in light of the recent Maxis service disruption.
CFM chairman Muhammad Radzillah said consumers were becoming increasingly dependent on technology to remain connected both socially and professionally.
Muhammad said any disruptions to or service outages would have a major impact on the lives of users as reflected in the comments from consumers that have flooded social media.
"More and more of us are using our devices to make calls and conduct our personal and work affairs online and from all sorts of places as well.
"When this incident occurred, consumers who were working from home, students who were trying to join online classes, those who urgently needed to respond to messages and even those who were trying to make payments at toll plazas, all found themselves in difficulties.
"Many have suffered not only inconvenience but actual losses as well and they should be compensated," he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Muhammad said while CFM preferred for there not to be any down time, in instances where disruption happens, users must receive more than just an apology and a token effort at compensation.
In previous cases he said, consumers suffered service outages for several hours and were only offered free SMS and in a more recent case, free data for a few hours.
"Compared to the loss to consumers, the cost of SMS' is negligible while for users on unlimited data plans, the free data may not make much difference to them," he said.
According to Muhammad, as Malaysia moved towards 5G, these issues should be a thing of the past.
He said quality of service was a matter for the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).
He believes that MCMC had reviewed the relevant mandatory standards not too long ago.
"However, what we are talking about here is more than just regulatory action but compensation for consumers who have been disadvantaged.
"In some jurisdictions, it may involve compensation commensurate with the loss to the consumer. Perhaps this can be a starting point for discussions between the relevant stakeholders," he said.
Muhammad said CFM was confident that with the compensation guidelines, the number of complaints that it received would be reduced and/or resolved faster.
He said a framework that offered guidance on suitable and commensurate compensation would be beneficial to all parties involved in complaints management, providing a clear and consistent basis for resolution.