A word from the CEO.
An open letter to discontent Jumboplay user and general public, a response to allegation posted on public forums regarding Jumboplay service.
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Hi,
I have been actively following these threads for a while with a great sense of regret. I’m Mark and I am the CEO of Dragonback Media Interactive, the company behind the JumboPlay service.
I haven’t been in a position to communicate with you guys, as we are a technology/service provider and TM Net is our ISP partner in Malaysia, who bring us to streamyx subscribers and handle billing, payment, etc.
However I feel the need to clarify several points brought up and face the music.
We have operated Games on Demand services in several countries, looked at best practices globally and really believe in what we are doing, which is bringing an affordable always on, always updated games download streaming service to Malaysians. And we will be bringing better, more exciting games and new services in the not too distant future.
The model that we have jointly deployed with TM Net is one that is the most popular globally, called an Opt-out policy. With TM Net, we feel so strongly that it is a good, honest and attractive service, that we have been willing to fund the cost of a 2 week free trial to any streamyx subscriber, as long as they are valid and in good standing, as long as subscribers agree that if they enjoy the service, they vote to continue a business relationship with us by becoming our customers. This they can do simply by not taking the cancellation route, before the 2 week free trial ends and they agree to begin a relationship with us for the future. The reason that there is a six month minimum subscription period, is that we operate a business that is not based on high margins in order to ensure prices are kept low to consumers. Bandwidth costs in Asia are at their peak and we buy large dedicated pipes to ensure the rapidity of the file download is the best that your last mile connection will possibly deliver. To help us to cover the costs of the 2 week free trial, we require that term. If however, you cancel within the free trial period, there is no charge whatsoever and we bear the costs.
Now in reading through threads in the forum, there is a lot of unhappiness from you and for this I apologise on behalf of all parties involved. It has never been any intention of any of us to misrepresent anything to cause this reaction. My colleagues and I continue to be excited and upbeat about what we as a Malaysian company are doing in Asia and are particularly disappointed by unforeseen circumstances that you have all seemed to have faced.
Please let me try to give you answers to your most common issues;
1) Never communicated that there was a commitment beyond the 2 week trial
We have always clearly made it known that taking a trial can be turned into a customer relationship with us. The box requires ticking to proceed. Some of you have made the point that it is all in text, which yes we felt the T&C’s are similar to an agreement, so text is best. However, we have taken note of positive criticism and have added numerals to perhaps clarify the T&C’s even further. Now for the advertising,where the word free was used. We felt it was correct in that it was a totally free experience should a user simply not proceed beyond the 2 week period and also that the T&C’s would clear everything up when you got to the site and have a read. Clearly you have felt differently and have been very vocal about it here. Again I apologise. We will not make that assumption that written text is the most clear and unambigious and will be crystal clear going forward with numerals.
2) Problems with cancellation during subscription
As we do not have access to your bill, we are unable to cancel subscribers. That is handled by TM Net for strict security reasons and rightly so. Who would want a third party company crawling into your ISP and having access to private and confidential transactions. We can however handle the cancellations within the trial period and we do. The Unsubscribe button is on the “My Account” which is the default page that everyone visits each time they login. For purposes of making our service better, we do ask for a quick survey to be filled and consider the feedback with great respect. If you become a subscriber with us, i.e. you have continued beyond the 2 week free trial period, yes you are within a six month minimum subscription period and if you cancel at a TM Point because you don’t want to carry on from month 7, I’m afraid the T&C’s apply and you will be charged the remaining duration of the six months onto your next streamyx bill. Nevertheless, you will have continued access to the service and all the existing and new games added for the entire six months as you have paid for it and we honour that.
Please note that we have been sending monthly e-mails indicating a charge to your streamyx bill and the reason is our system still recognizes you as a paying customer for that six months. We will be stopping that as it has clearly led to confusion and in actual fact we do not handle the billing anyway. We just wanted to be transparent with our customers.
3) Discrepancies with billing
Again we are unable to handle this part. I do know that TM Net billing charge based on pro-rating based on your statement date, so if you had become a subscriber with us 2 weeks before your statement date, often you would see e.g. RM24.99 + RM12.49 (pro-rated amount) on your next bill. Some services charge a full month regardless of date of cancellation. We do not.
4) Scamming allegations
It really saddens us to be viewed as unfairly as this, but your individual circumstances have probably driven this impression and we regret that wholeheartedly. I want to take this opportunity to express that in no way shape or form have we intentionally ever been supportive of negative behavior and am very disturbed that we have been even associated with such activity.
When we first started, we did try, as some of you have pointed out, a free 2 week trial credit card and again it was totally true. This was on Jumboplay.com itself and we did give a 2 week period free for anyone who signed on and many Malaysian subscribers are truly happy with their service. However, many of you did not take that offer, and we understand that not everyone will.
Now on Jumboplay.com its simple, if you want to become a subscriber, you can get and we give you 2 weeks free from commencement. You are given 6 weeks for a 4 week cost.
5) Download Speeds
We really do have fat pipes that deliver pretty much the maximum throughput speeds that your personal connection will permit. However, depending on the geographical area that you are in and your personal connection or the concurrent number of fellow subscribers downloading from our servers, I understand throughput problems can occur. Unfortunately, for the former we are unable to help as it’s out of our hands, for the latter we regularly add hardware to cope with rising demand.
Sometimes the duration of a download may be due to the size of the game. On each game page, we give you an estimated time in minutes it would take for that game file to be downloaded, based on your connection speed. Our system normally enables you to download a portion of the whole game file and play, whilst the remainder streams in the background. Some game files however do require pretty much the entire game to be downloaded before play. The other thing to help you is that we have the “Test My System” link in each game page, which tells you if your current hardware/software can play the game at its optimum. If not there are suggested easy upgrades like drivers, etc. that can be easily downloaded to ensure best circumstances. If your system may be a little older and you simply cannot play some of the latest Premium games, we have a whole other bunch that can be played on lower system specs.
6) Our Customer Support
We are a small tech company trying to do big things from and in Malaysia and quite frankly are making very good headway internationally. On your comments that our CSR’s are not very communicative, only saying to cancel as a subscriber please visit your local TM Point, its because this is what was agreed with TM Net as only they can handle billing issues. My CSR’s are a good bunch of guys and girls and really do not deserve the uncomfortable situations that some of you have placed them in. All of us in the company pride ourselves on being gamers, wanting to give a great experience to Malaysians and Asians and give good Customer Support on technical issues, etc. After all without you, we would be nowhere. We may not at this point in time be able to give you the latest games released yesterday in the market, but they will come onto your service soon.
In summary, I just wanted to explain as best as possible the concerns and issues that you have raised. In short it falls upon me to relay this the best that I can.
We can’t do much about the past, but we can make sure things are better in the future. For those that are subscribers, please do enjoy the service,we really do want to do good things here. For those that are less than happy,again my personal apologies. We want to be known as a company that provides a good service and good will and welcome positive criticism and I will, time and travel permitting, from time to time pop back onto this forum to take note. I expect that some of you will take the opportunity to give me a hard time and I expect that.
We may not be perfect but have the will and determination to come as close as possible.
Thank you for reading this.
Sincerely,
Mark
Dragonback Media Interactive
