The great Telkom Disconnect

Indonesia’s state -owned Telkom seems bent on shooting itself on the foot.

First it bans Netflix on some wooly excuse of protecting Indonesians from violence and pornography. In doing so it reaped the wrath of many Indonesian consumers and netizens who  felt that they are the best judges of their own morality.

Then, when many of them decided to cancel Telkom’s internet service they were told that their landline phone connections would be snipped as well.

Curious though that Coconuts in the article below should describe it as a PR nightmare. Telkom has a management nightmare, in which its highly paid and qualified managers are all drawing out pistols and shooting themselves collectively on the foot. Why is it all of a sudden a PR problem? Perhaps the managers need the PR peeps to be a fall guys?

Customers switching from Telkom’s ISP due to Netflix ban angry their phone services are being cut too

After Telkom, Indonesia’s largest internet service provider, decided to unilaterally block Netflix on its own to “protect its customers”, many other ISPs took advantage of the situation to advertise their unblocked internet as alternatives.

Evidently, people really are interested in an ISP that doesn’t play moral guardian for its customers and have been leaving Telkom in droves. Or trying to at least.

Now, Telkom is facing a PR nightmare as many customers have recently been told that there’s no way for them to cut off their Indihome (Telkom’s Internet service provide) services without also cutting off their cable TV and telephone services.

Some people are complaining that they’re being forced to give up home telephone numbers that they’ve had for decades just because they want to switch to a better ISP.

“Unsubscribing to Telkom Indonesia’s Indihome = Stop internet, stop tv, and .. Unplug the telephone line, and the telephone number I’ve had for more that phone 20 years is gone just like that…”

Facebook user Fariz Ridwan wrote on Facebook Monday night, as quoted by Kompas. Fariz said that Telkom’s customer service reps told him that there was no way that he could unsubscribe from Indihome Internet without losing all of his other services.

Read more here