Business Ethics: Reflected from my experience.

Ethics is also applicable to business world in the same way as it is applicable to all other aspects of life and ethical dilemmas exist in the world of business too. When we talk of business ethics topics such as insider trading/ consumer rights and corporate social responsibly comes to mind. However, here I would like to take the example of an issue of business ethics that I have personally being facing here since I came to Malaysia. I have been using a 4G internet service from a local service provider. When I signed up for the service, I paid a deposit of  RM 200 that according to the agreement they are supposed to refund at the end of my 1-year contract with them. I signed up for an internet package under which I am supposed to receive internet at Mbps  However, when I was using the service I barely got an internet speed of 100Kbps. Moreover I had to face frequent downtime and recently my account was suspended and I was asked to pay a reconnection fee, when I inquired I was informed that I did not pay my bills, but when I provided the proof of payment they took 2 weeks to reconnect my account. In the meantime, I had to use pay an additional fee to use the service and when the month’s bill came, I was charged for the full 30 days and I did not even receive an apology for the problems I had to face in addition to the additional charges done on my account. Later when I emailed them about the additional charges I did not get a reply for 2 weeks, when I asked to disconnect my account as my contract had ended by then, I was informed that the deposit I made is now not refundable as they decided to change their policy on that. From this single case, we can see that there are so many ethical problems involved in the business world. Is it ethical to change agreements that are made by the consent of two parties later without consenting one party for the benefit of the changing party? Is it ethical for businesses to charge customers for services that they have not provided, is it ethical to charge the customer for 30 days when they did not provide the service for 2 weeks? Is it ethical not to admit the faults of their employees and apologize to the customers for the difficulties they have to go through due to these in addition to compensating for their monetary loss due to these faults? “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.” Henry Ford

#AhmedNasir