Maxis is among the 3 Telcos that is set to make available the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in Malaysia tonight starting 12.01am (6 November, 2014).
Only customers who pre-ordered will be able to walk in and collect their new iPhone 6 tonight. They can choose to self-collect at six Maxis Centres nationwide, namely KLCC, Johor Bahru, Penang, Kuantan, Kota Kinabalu and Kuching, between midnight and 4.00 am on 6 November. During this time, Maxis will not entertain customers who walk without pre-order.
The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will be available to walk-in customers at all Maxis Centres and Maxis Exclusive Partners (MEPs) across the country during business hours on 6 November. However MalaysianWireless believes that Maxis is already out of stock for the iPhone 6 Plus and now limited to hundred units of iPhone 6(16GB).
At the point of writing, Maxis is no longer accepting pre-orders for the iPhone 6 as the site has be taken down.
It is believed that Maxis received some 50,000 units of the new iPhone from Apple, 60% of these unit are iPhone 6 while the remaining 40% are iPhone 6 Plus.
Apart from the Telcos, Malaysians could also purchase the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus at the Apple Malaysia Online Store and Apple Authorised Retailers such as Machines.
Maxis iPhone 6 Pre-order issues
The mobile operator started accepting pre-orders on 31st October, however a huge number of customers experience issues with the pre-order system and were unable to complete their purchase.
The whole Maxis website started crashing at the night of 30 October and only a limited number of orders were successful in the morning of 31 October. A number of customers claim that they took hours just to order the new smartphone from the Maxis Online Store.
Thousands of unsatisfied customer shared their poor experience with Maxis on Facebook, Twitter and online forums, including the Maxis Forums for the past few days. Some of these customers experience the following issues since 31st October:
- iPhone 6 pre-order site down for hours
- Maxis Online Store down
- Can’t check out and pay the order
- Slow loading
- So many errors, example “The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request GET /maxis/personal/devices/ios/apple/apple-iphone-6-plus-64gb-gold/p/100002051001“ - No confirmation email after payment
- Shipment change from self collect to delivery without customer consent
- Shipment date confusion. Delivery is suppose to be on 6th November onwards, between 2 to 14 days depending on location. But some customers claim that they are seeing shipment after 20 November. Some shipment were targeted in December, but this could be a system error.
- The pre-order system did not recognize Maxis One Club members. In this case, advance payment for the iPhone 6 was not waived.
Check out thousands of these comments on the Maxis iPhone 6 pre-order over here on the LowYat Forum.
For customers who experience issues on 31st Oct, there were asked to leave their number on the website and Maxis would follow up. However the calls took 2-3 days later and most the iPhone units were already sold out.
It is unclear on why Maxis did not prioritize its Maxis One Club (MOC) members for the iPhone 6 pre-order. A number of MOC customers told MalaysianWireless that they were unable to secure the iPhone 6 Plus or the higher storage capacity iPhone 6 units.
Facts about the Maxis iPhone 6 pre-order system:
- Enough time to prepare: The Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were announced in early September and Maxis has about two months to prepare their iPhone pre-order system.
- Experience from last year’s iPhone pre-order: Maxis accepted iPhone 5S pre-order last year, and the Telco should have learned about past mistakes, make improvements. The huge number of online traffic is undoubtedly expected for the iPhone pre-order.
- Maxis Data Centre is “State-of-the-art Tier III infrastructure for comprehensive IT operations”- Despite owning a Data Centre, located in Shah Alam, Maxis couldn’t handle these huge traffic.
Some recommendations for Maxis to improve the iPhone Pre-order system:
- Use separate servers and isolate the iPhone pre-order system. The huge online traffic not only crashed the iPhone site but the whole Maxis Online Store.
- Payment in 72 hours. A payment gateway could only handle a certain number of payment at a certain point of time. Maxis could email customers an invoice for their pre-order and give them 72 hours to complete the order. The customer gets to secure the iPhone for up to 72 hours until payment is made. This helps reduce the load on the server and wouldn’t crash the whole site. Peace of mind for the customers.
- Payment on collection. Most of the people ordering the iPhone are already Maxis customers. Customers should be given the option to secure the iPhone and pay for it during collection. This helps reduce the amount of time a customer spends on the pre-order site.
- Prioritise Maxis One Club (MOC) members. A MOC member is like a Maxis VIP customer. These customers spend above the average and they are very loyal to Maxis. Like last year, Maxis should have opened to iPhone pre-order to MOC customers 1st.
P.s: This is a commentary. MalaysianWireless should not be held responsible for any in-accurate information published in the article.
