Goodwill gesture not enough as compensation

M1 MOBILE SERVICE OUTRAGE

FROM READER LIM WEE PING

M1 mobile subscribers experienced yet another service outage last Tuesday. The disruption, for me, was from 7am till about 1pm.

M1 issued a public apology to their consumers and offered free local calls and messaging yesterday, as a goodwill gesture.

But the service disruption occurred on a working day, during the morning peak hours. It is not enough to offer some selected free services on a weekend when most people would be having a rest day.

And how does this compensate those who subscribe to data plans and could not go online during the outage?

LIMITED OFFER

I believe this limited offer of free services will not substantially benefit the majority of M1 subscribers who were affected. It is not as if they will be able to carry forward any unused calls and messages to the following month.

M1 was recently hit with a record fine by the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) for a major service disruption last year.

It would have been better if IDA could have worked with the service provider and converted the fine to cash rebates for all M1 users.

It is us consumers who are paying for the service and not IDA, and we are the ones who need to be compensated for these disruptions.