Calling Somebody in MARA - A Real Test of Patience

MARA yang tidak MARA (pic from MARA's website)

I am sure many will agree with me on this!

My son went to Canada on 1 Sept 2007 on MARA convertible loan. Since then he has not received any omnthly allowance or what so ever directly from MARA. If we calculate it right, Sept, Oct, Nov & Dec are 4 months already. And we are pretty sure that the allowance paid before he left was only meant for last year. So where's the allowance for Jan 2008 onwards??

My son also bought a notebook (computer of course!) whe he first arrived there, so he has actually used up quite a lot of his money there. He's lucky that i gave him a supplementary credit card, and also that the "wang pendahuluan" that MARA gave for other things were not used when he was still here.

I called MARA after Raya Puasa (when was that?? Early Nov) to enquire on his behalf (obviously u don't expect him to call MARA directly from Canada do you?). trying to get hold of the person was really tough - either she's on leave, she's in a mtg, she's in a discussion, "dia keluar sekejap", "she's not at her desk", etc..etc... and when i finally managed to get hold of her, her answer was "oh, kami BELUM BUKA FILE lagi untuk pelajar-pelajar yang baru pergi" :-(

Now, 2 months on, i've been trying to call her again since last week. same reasons, same situation as above. this morning, i was told that she's on leave, the person wjo answered the call "redirected" me to another perosn, but there was no answer.

luckily i got a nice operator who noticed my voice (after calling the general line several times) who tried to get hold of someone who could probably help me, only to find out that today is JUMAAT, they are now having baca yasin and doa selamat. DURING OFFICE HOUR???? AND AT THE COST OF CUSTOMER'S DISCOMFORT?? Am i supposed to be "on call" just to catch them? I just don't understand and believe me, i am furious!! just imagine if i am in Kuching or KK and i have to
make long distance calls just to try to get hold of this officer.

What am i thinking now?? even if i finally manage to get hold of one of them, would you think the response is favourable? Only time will tell...

Just earlier today i called the HSBC call centre regarding my son's supp credit card, to enquire if i
need to alert them if my son is going to make a significant transaction, and the treatment and prompt response I got was totally opposite of what I got when I called MARA...

Tak MARA (as moving forward) langsung MARA!

Addition on Sunday 20th Jan:
Last Friday, after writing this blog, I made a call again to MARA (I was sure the doa selamat should be over by then), and was finally passed to a nice gentleman by the name of Mokhtar. En Mokhtar accessed the system and confirmed that my son's data IS in it, though he could not confirm if any payment had been made to him (since the payment is being processed by a different department, i.e. the finance). At least I found out from him that the money should be banked-in monthly starting January 2008.