Single Bill for Tmnet & Telekom: Why not just omit the Telephone bill?

 Effective from 1st May 2007, Telekom Malaysia (TM) combined TMNet Streamyx bill with telephone bill. The new bill will be known as BIL TELEFON & MULTIMEDIA. The single bill exercise is announced as one of the initiatives taken by TM to reduce cost and to provide convenience to its customers as most customers will have both telephone and Internet services. In addition, with the introduction of single bill customers can easily
determine how much they are paying for various TM services.

Same as most Internet user in Malaysia, I have both bills mailed to my house every month at different date: the Streamyx bill and also the telephone bill. Now TM is very smart. By reducing the bills into one:

1. They can save cost by cutting the postage and paper expenses into half. This is great since then they can save more money and spend it at better place such as upgrading our Streamyx bandwidth or providing free wi-fi at more hot spot.
2. They can also cut down the number of cashier at the TM counter because the work is reduced about 50%.

So after the combination of both bills, my multimedia bill will look like this:

Some argue that user will have to pay 5% service charges for the original streamyx bill. Currently my Streamyx bill is RM86/month. Add another 5% it will become RM90.30 already
In fact, after I read the Q & A included in the information sheet attached with my latest bill:

I am yet to receive the combined bill to verify the service charges calculation. If the above statement is true, I would need to squeeze two bowls of Penang Laksa out of my meal budget to pay for the extra fees.

I always think that there are ridiculous charges in the bill. After combining the bills, TM thought that they are giving better service and more convenience.
It works out that:

1 + 1 = 1

(1 streamyx bill + 1 telephone bill = 1 multimedia bill)

but in fact, I dare say that most user only need one bill. All the time the equation should be

1 + 0 = 1
(1 streamyx bill + redundant telephone bill = 1 multimedia bill)

Yes. Telephone bill is redundant to me all these years. Who needs it anyway if not for the broadband service?
I should be paying for the broadband service only. I never need to use the house phone. Every month I need to spend some time to clean the idle dusty phone which I rent from TM for RM26/month.

Further more, starting September 2006, TM provides user a free voice mail service. At first I thought it is great since it is free. But when I started to find out that when people seldom retrieve their voice mail, and we are charged every time the line is connected, it feels like another redundant service again. It is free to the person who receives calls, but it hurts the wallet of those who make the call but fail to convey the message.

1 = 1 is what we need, don’t give us any unnecessary spices.

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