The Maxis scandal aka “social media crisis” is all over the news now. It started off with a complaint from a disgruntled Maxis user on the Lowyat forum, and it sort of escalated and went viral from there.

People had started porting out of the Maxis network since then, and even now as we speak. I won’t go over the details about what happened but if you missed out on the whole thing you can catch up on it here.

Here’s how the Maxis Saga Started

Maxis, Malaysia’s largest telecoms company, has found itself in the middle of a fierce row with consumers over its offering of significantly cheaper mobile price plans to certain users but not others.

The incident began after one customer wrote a detailed post on a Lowyat forum alleging that their friend was offered a far cheaper mobile plan by Maxis than they were, despite being a loyal customer for 10 years.

After trying to get the same deal, the poster, named jackson5759, decided to switch to a competitor, at which point Maxis allegedly allowed him to have the cheaper deal.

Moreover, further ire was drawn after jackson5759 revealed that Maxis has cheaper 4G price plans for Sabah and Sarawak in east Malaysia than the rest of the country.

The Post (that) Went Viral

The post was written last week and has gone viral across Malaysia, with numerous users expressing their outrage over Maxis’ seemingly poor treatment of loyal customers.

The huge differences between price plans that only certain customers can access has caused particular anger, as users do not understand how these particular loyal customers are chosen for the cheaper plans.

As a result, dozens of customers have written of their intention to leave Maxis and switch to rivals Celcom or Digi, which have more competitive price plans.

The “Exaggerated” Save Offer from Maxis

In an attempt to manage the issue, Maxis released a statement calling jackson5759’s post “exaggerated” and saying the price plan talked about in the post “does not exist in the way it was described”.

Now, after having used what is obviously a wrong choice of word, this has further angered the social media community with one user, likely the original poster himself challenging Maxis as to which part exactly of his Lowyat posting has been exaggerated.

Amid all the noise on this issue, and the angry mobs tearing through Maxis’ defenses left right and center, we have the Maxis CEO Morten Landal personally going live on Facebook yesterday to release an official apology. They’ve even started giving out additional FREE data upgrade (1GB -> 5GB, 3GB -> 8GB, etc) to all MaxisOne subscribers — inadvertently leaving out iValue subscribers which was another source of discontent.

Paid Reviews to the Rescue?

Amidst the feeling of these users being shortchanged, it’s important to remember exactly what it is that Maxis did wrong. And what it didn’t. Well, or so it was said by Timothy Tiah in what folks are claiming to be a paid review in favor of Maxis.

According to Maxis, as with any company that has good data on customers, we often design and run targeted campaigns based on factors such as tenure, types of services used, payment history and many more,” the statement reads.

“These targeted campaigns are to ensure that customers get to try out the varied services and plans that Maxis offers.” The company also explains its special 4G offer for Sabah and Sarawak, saying it was an introductory promotion for the region.

Maxis Users Remained Unconvinced

However, several respondents remained unimpressed and posted comments on Facebook slamming Maxis’ statement, which to many confirmed that the company discriminates between customers with little transparency.

The telco’s senior vice president of marketing, Sulin Lau, is also responding to user’s criticisms personally on Facebook to try and handle the issue. Some are even calling for her resignation for personally approving such marketing plans of which inadvertently affected the Maxis brand and dragged the company into this controversy.

“Yes we give out different offers to existing customers,” Lau wrote. “All banks, telcos and some airlines do this BECAUSE existing customers are more valuable to new ones.

“That’s why we don’t advertise these. Not because they are ‘secret’, but because they are not offered to a new joiner with no history.”

Here’s the Bottom Line (psst, and the RM99/10GB plan no one told you about)

So, is it true there’s such a thing as save offers, and do Maxis really value their existing customers and treat them differently? Well, it really depends on which end of the reward stick you’re on.
For some of us, you might have recalled there was such a thing as Unlimited Data for RM99 nett back then. With the advent of the first iPhone back in 2007, unlimited data users could really utilitise this package with nary a worry about having to pay more than RM99 for it. I’ve even personally max out to 30GB per month cos we simply tether the iPhone to whatever gadgets we’re using, sometimes a few devices at a time. We don’t even need Streamyx or UniFi.

Then as time progresses, we have tons of apps that ride on data from the likes of call apps (Skype, Viber, LINE, etc) to messaging apps (iMessage, WhatsApp, Messenger, etc) and coupled with the ability to tether (Personal Hotspots, anyone?) to your iPad, tablets, or even laptops, something’s got to give.

For us legacy users of the Unlimited Data package, Maxis still accords us the Unlimited Data package, but they have since capped it at 10GB for RM99 per package. Here, we’re talking at a time in 2016 (yes, now) where users are still paying RM48/1GB, which is paltry, legacy data users get to enjoy RM99/10GB.

But this is an offer that they would not openly broadcast and we are obviously not supposed to openly mention about it. It is, after all, a package that we signed up for back in 2007 and obviously we’re entitled to it — even till now.

From what I gather, there are still quite a number of Unlimited Data package users out there. The only downside being the 10GB cap and subsequent unlimited use at a reduced (throttled) speed till the next billing month, we’re happy campers.

However, as you no doubt heard by now, they are offering a free data upgrade to all MaxisOne users. Hey, but NOT everyone is on MaxisOne. How about people like us still on their supposedly value-for-money iValue Plans? We’re getting sidelined, once again.

Are we going to start Saga No. 2? Like I said, it really depends on which end of the reward stick you’re on.