>> doubt Hong Kong is out of kilter with the rest of the world in this respect.
I think where HK is not in sync is with the whole 1 sided approach. Say you signup with PCCW (and this is true even for business broadband... I'm not talking SLA negotiated high value contracts .. say $2-4K a month type contracts) and your line repeatedly keeps going down... everytime it goes down, PCCW has to send someone out and it takes a day or two for them to show up.
Same goes for telephone contracts... you buy and pay for 3G data and you cannot access data from many places.
Do you then as a consumer have the option of saying, no thank you PCCW, I'm going with another company? NO....
In a truly free economy, you would be able to dump PCCW or your mobile provider and move on with a month's notice.
As pin says... the PCCW internet contract is a masterpiece.... read it and you might just discover that your first born is really not yours anymore.
I'm pretty sure the internet we signed up for in NZ was one month's notice to leave. Certainly not 2 year contracts. Ditto Australia and the UK. I agree - PCCW is way out of kilter with the rest of the world.
Guys, remember, you can sign up to non-committed contracts in HK, you often just have to pay more. PCCW does offer non-committed contracts for internet.
Also there are mobile operators (such as China Mobile) which do offer monthly plans, where you only have to give one months notice and are not tied down to a minimum length. SMV also allows you to break your contract by paying HK$500.
This is the terms and conditions for telstraclear, the ISP I used in NZ. For most packages the termination period was FIVE DAYS - some special discount packages had minimum terms. They also do not guarantee performance of the network.
TelstraClear - Now's Good
Usually NEVER revealed to customers and never offered for business connections.Guys, remember, you can sign up to non-committed contracts in HK, you often just have to pay more. PCCW does offer non-committed contracts for internet.
>> customer service is another thing that HK seriously lacks
Not always the case. As much as I use PCCW to make a point in this thread, I've had good service from them. A month ago, our modem died on a Sunday evening and the PCCW guy came on Monday afternoon and replaced it. (I had a great customer service rep who got the authorisation from his manager / whoever and called me back in an hour or two, and then again someone else called me on Monday morning to re-confirm.)
Now, while this is great, if this were to happen every week or couple of weeks, I would have to switch providers - because of general and persistent failures - which simply cannot be done other than buying out the whole contract.
So my issue here is not with ping times or sporadic / 1ce every couple of year failures.. my issue is what happens if you get consistently bad service levels from an ISP or telco?
Take the example of a residential lease.. sure once in a while things go wrong and they may take some time to fix, but what happens in the case where every Sunday say NOTHING works in your kitchen or toilets.
Last edited by shri; 18-05-2010 at 10:56 AM.