Siu Lun

I’ve tried the Hong Kong consumer council website recently as I wanted to file a complaint against PCCW. See details.

I’ve discovered that their complaint form does not work at all on a Mac. This is most probably because it doesn’t work with Firefox, Safari and Opera. I haven’t tried IE but I have a sneaky suspicion that it will probably work.

I’ve found the issue related to a javascript form check statement crapping out.

I’ve e-mailed them about the complaints form with their enquiry form which seems to work. But have had no reply and it still doesn’t work a week after I’ve contacted them.

Whoever made it, didn’t test it properly. Whoever tested it, only tested it in IE. big fat FAIL.

WARNING to all entrepreneurs and small business owners and in general, the people of Hong Kong who needs broadband and phone services.

Do not EVER get broadband or phone line from PCCW.

They’re an evil company that is out to only cheat you out of as much money as possible.

Story:
I’m closing down my office after a few months of operations as I’m joining a multi-national company. I phoned to ask for my contract to be terminated.

THEN they informed me that those ‘free gifts’ they give out they’ll charge me for it.

There is a whole lot of wrongs with that.

1) I’ve never signed anything to agree to that term.
2) Their terms specifically states that any ‘outstanding’ free gifts would be forfeited in case of early termination. But does not mention you have to pay for any free gifts already sent.
3) One of the free gift they’ve given to me was due to the fact that they’ve messed up my plans and my installation date had to be rearranged so I had no business broadband in the office (which is critical to the running of my company) at a later date.

Now they want me to pay for it? I feel utterly cheated and it is absolutely wrong to force free gifts to others but then charge for it later. Reminds me of some those ‘beauty centre’ scam that was on the news a few months ago.

I’ve got no issues with paying for the rest of the contract to terminate (though I’m very unhappy with that as it is) but they charge ‘on-top’ of that for early termination? WTF. How much free money are they getting with people doing that?

I will _NEVER_ use PCCW or netvigator again. They’re dishonest, untrustworthy and overall crooked.

Having been here for a year, I can summarise the web development scene of Hong Kong as: fragmented and struggling to survive.

There are a huge amount of ‘developers’ and ‘designers’ who’ve set up their own company in Hong Kong.

This to me is really curious because most of those who have done that do not have the quality, money, education/knowledge to ever expand.

When I first arrived, one of my priorities was to try and find partners to start my company, and believe me I’ve asked a few, and none of those who’ve setup shop already like the idea of working with others. I guess that’s a reason why they run their own shop.

Maybe it’s just a difference in personality.

But you’d think the fact that Hong Kong is only a ‘city’ is enough reason to band together to make something big rather than fragment yourself and limit yourself forever to local unrewarding work.