There’s a new site up at www.saveandinvest.my . The purpose of the site is to encourage Malaysians to save money, and share their tips with others.

The part which I feel might interest you is the following: The prize of free broadband for a year - a 1 yearsubscription to Celcom Broadband for the best tips submitted.

I’ve posted up two tips so far: (go vote for them!)

Phone Bills : TM Net Streamyx Combo for new residences (waive fixed line rental fee)
It links back to this site (of course, haha), which shares the list of ISPs with pricings.

General : List of broadband service providers in Malaysia with prices
Two, a tip on how you can save on your phone bills through the TMNet Streamyx Combo which waives your fixed line bills.

Check out the site, and do post your own tips as well. I’ll be just as happy if one of the blog readers here read this.

Will be posting more broadband tips soon Including how to choose your broadband provider and cut down your costs, various pricings of broadband service providers compared, and more.

Meantime, you can check out also what some other Advertlets Bloggers have to say about the site:

Party girl Amanda Choe shares how you can get unique pieces and lower prices at flea markets
Naomi Tham writes about how sleeping early can save you money.
Student LogicYuan is smart and suggests charging your phone at work/at school.
UncleJosh talks about the growing global financial slowdown and offers some tips on how to go on dates cheaper
AprilCherrie takes you on a step by step tutorial on how to post up your tips on the site

Till then, cheers.

This is to all those that have more than one mobile line with Maxis. I have two.

Take it as a lesson that you can learn from my expense.

Do be mindful to check your bill for any hidden/confusing charges. If anything, this is the most important thing to check. (Just dial 123 to speak to customer service from your phone) AND CHECK: what monthly plan both of your numbers are subscribed to.

If you, like me have simply been thinking the high bills are due to high usage (eg many calls to different networks, outstation calls), think again. Mobile networks charge you a minimum subscription fee for all numbers that you have. So if you change the primary line you use, make sure to downgrade the other one.

The other number I have, I am maintaining but hardly use. For that, I have been paying roughly RM238 per month, simply because I did not change the plan. To be entirely fair, there probably was SOME rollover, but very minimal.

Of are a few cheaper options to maintain a line (but not really use it): The minimum RM50 plan, and the RM30 sub-line plan.

This is the first time I’m using the word fuck here. Fuck. Seriously. It’s really money wasted.

You probably know about the 50/80/150 plans from Maxis. For the record, my other number is on the RM250 plan (which I was subscribed to BEFORE it the plan was announced publicly). A couple of months back, I received a gold envelope with a nicely printed pullout brochure that invited me to use the RM250 plan. Apparently my usage is high (while I was using one line), so it was nice to get that “custom invitation”.

However, it seems unfair that same diligence in notification to upgrade, does not apply to downgrades. I have been a Maxis customer for almost 8 years. Maybe more I think.

Although technically it is “correct”, there should be some sort of notification that I am subscribed to too high a package for a line that I hardly use. Or at least for it to be spelled out clearly on the bill. It really doesn’t help that the bill structure is very confusing. And btw, whatever happened to listing individual numbers called? Its all grouped together now by outstation/network to network, etc.

The moral of the story is, check what package your phone is on. Telcos are going to continue making money from the confused (or those that don’t go through their bills with a fine tooth comb), but there’s no reason why it should be me or you reading this, and damn really, it shouldn’t be me. This whole WTF moment is making me considerMNP.

I blogged about the Maybank2u redesign earlier, and here are some quick thoughts now that the new Maybank2u is “in the wild” and released”…

I hope Maybank reads this!

- Do something about the speed. It should be faster not slower. Also, I keep getting the “system unavailable message”. I understand its the first few days, but the server should be fast enough. The site files are not large (thanks largely to css and efficient html), but the problem is the number of requests. Ask your web host about the “maximum number of connections per second” and a “burst facility”. As a rule of thumb, you should be spending between 5-6 figures on hosting alone for something as widely used as Maybank2u.

- It’ll be a good idea to have my account balance on the mainpage itself. A lot of people login just to see if their cheque has cleared, or if a payment has gone through, etc. If you can put it on the mainpage itself, you could probably cut down on a lot of pageviews, hence saving some server load.

- Give at least fifteen minutes before automatically logging me out. Not five. Five is ridiculous. Most people have 8-10 tabs open at any given time. I had to login 4-5 times, after the site timing out, seriously! It is not usual user behaviour (at least not for most users under 40 years old) to load up a website, and wait until it loads - most people browse other tabs while waiting for a site to load. Also, on top of that - it’ll be better to pop up a new window with a “do you want to stay logged in” (ala HSBC) rather than a dialog box within the site.

- Waiting for a TAC is still annoying.