After Telkom, Indonesia’s largest internet service provider, decided to unilaterally block Netflix on its own to “protect its customers”, many other ISPs took advantage of the situation to advertise their unblocked internet as alternatives.
Evidently, people really are interested in an ISP that doesn’t play moral guardian for its customers and have been leaving Telkom in droves. Or trying to at least.
Now, Telkom is facing a PR nightmare as many customers have recently been told that there’s no way for them to cut off their Indihome (Telkom’s Internet service provide) services without also cutting off their cable TV and telephone services.
Some people are complaining that they’re being forced to give up home telephone numbers that they’ve had for decades just because they want to switch to a better ISP.
“Unsubscribing to Telkom Indonesia’s Indihome = Stop internet, stop tv, and .. Unplug the telephone line, and the telephone number I’ve had for more that phone 20 years is gone just like that…” Facebook user Fariz Ridwan wrote on Facebook Monday night, as quoted by Kompas.
Fariz said that Telkom’s customer service reps told him that there was no way that he could unsubscribe from Indihome Internet without losing all of his other services.
Losing that landline number is obviously an even bigger deal to people who use Telkom for their home businesses, and there have also reports of them being forced to lose their long-standing numbers just to quit Indihome.
The problem is that Telkom offers customers “Triple Play” package that includes internet, cable TV, and telephone connections. Many customers moved to that package but are now complaining because they were never informed by Telkom that it meant they couldn’t unsubscribe from one service without unsubscribing to them all.
However one Telkom customer, Ridwan, told Kompas that he had actually filed a complaint with Telkom and was then told by a clerk that it was possible to keep your old number after unsubscribing to Indihome. Which, if true, shows there’s some definite miscommunication going on over there.
So far, Telkom hasn’t released a statement on the issue. However, the Indihome FAQ does mention that unsubscribing from Triple Play does require stopping all three services.
At the time of writing, the article about Telkom’s troubles is the most popular on Kompas, meaning their PR blunder it is getting seen and shared by a lot of people.
This is what you get for messing with our Netflix.
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