Kuantan Government Hospital (HTAA) Replied my Letter of Complaint!

Those of you who have been following my blog closely will remember the letter of complaint I composed regarding the poor service we received in the Kuantan Government Hospital (HTAA).

Unfortunately, I didn't receive any reply for 3 months. Last week I decided to email the letter again. I sent it to HTAA, the Ministry of Health (MOH) and to the office of the Prime Minister.

I received an email reply from the office of the Prime Minister a few days later, which looked like this:

Sir/Madam,

LETTER OF COMPLAINT

I hereby refer to your complaint as stated above.

2.      First and foremost, Ministry of Health (MOH) would like to express our utmost gratitude for your concern in bringing up this matter.

 
3.      MOH has been looking forward to hearing more of the public insights and opinion especially on matters that would help us to improve our service quality.

4.      Therefore, MOH will conduct an immediate inquiries as well as in-depth investigation to find the best way in resolving the issue.

Thank you.

HARTINI HASHIM

Public Relations Officer

Corporate Communication Unit

Ministry of Health Malaysia

It was great to get this reply and to finally see that something was being done. Yesterday I received a phone call from a matron at HTAA, who wanted to set up an appointment with me so that I could present my case to them.

Today four matrons from HTAA arrived at our house at 11am. We had a good discussion about my letter of complaint as I retold the events of those few days we spent at the hospital. 

They apologised numerous times for the poor service we endured and they informed me that action has already been taken over the negligent nurse who failed to check my wife's blood pressure. Other problems were openly discussed and shared between us and they will send me the final report on the matter when they return it to the MOH.

I feel a great sense of justice and I'm very happy that action has been taken so that the hospital can make the necessary improvements to change for the better, especially for its patients. We were thanked for sending the letter of complaint to them and Matron Zaida commented this morning, "If you don't tell us, we don't know."

Thank you to matrons Lee, Zaida, Sara and Tan who came to our house in response to my letter of complaint, apologised, and built new friendships with us. Your time and effort to resolve these issues is very much appreciated and accepted!

CPB members, vote for my photos here

On a more serious note, a letter of complaint

We are so happy with our newborn baby daughter Leah, but the whole process of being in the hospital was a horrible couple of days where the service was awful. I wasn't happy at all so I had to complain. Upon reaching home, I formed this letter which I emailed to the Malaysian Ministry of Health and to HTAA (Hospital Tengku Ampuan Afzan), the hospital in Kuantan where Fidelia gave birth:

To Whom It May Concern,

My wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl in the early hours of Wednesday 15th June, 2011, at HTAA, Kuantan. But, I'm sad to relate, we endured one inconvenience or problem after another. It was an awful two days at the hospital as we witnessed outrageous unprofessionalism in the vast majority of staff we encountered.

I was absolutely appalled and shocked at some of the antics of nurses there.

It all started when my wife was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning due to painful and consistent contractions. While I waited outside the screening room I was not informed by any staff about the progress of my wife. I was waiting for a good two hours, completely in the dark as to my wife's condition. Nobody made any effort whatsoever to update me on events. Eventually, after hearing screams coming from the room, and becoming increasingly worried, I went to ask a nurse what was going on. She couldn't even answer me, probably because of poor English, so the male doctor came out to tell me that my wife is going to be sent to the labour room right away!

After exiting the ambulance I walked beside my wife's bed, doing all within my power to comfort her. It turned out that the baby's head was already protruding, even while she was still in the screening room in a different building! Why did it take so long to get my wife to the labour room, and for the ambulance to arrive from just around the corner?

As we made our way to the delivery room, none of the two accompanying nurses attempted to communicate with me to describe my wife's condition. I was left to walk into walls and the nurses showed complete disregard for me when they allowed the double doors to close right in my face! It was as if I didn't even exist to them!

My wife was in labour and the baby was on it's way out by the time we reached the labour room. Of course, I attempted to go in with her and I was told by a flurry of nurses and a male doctor that I wasn't allowed to enter. I pressed them as to why but was offered no satisfactory explanation! Instead the nurses were laughing. I still don't know what was so funny. The male doctor was rather rude as well, when I heard him remark "What's his problem?" as the doors were closing. I clearly heard it and asked him what he just said, but he flatly denied saying anything. I refused to leave the labour hall and after two minutes they told me I could come in, where a few minutes later my wife gave birth to our daughter.

No sooner had the baby come out than I was once again told to leave my wife's side without any type of explanation at all. For 45 minutes I waited outside with no update or explanation by any nurse whatsoever. What sort of treatment is this? The hospital pretends to be husband-friendly, but I can tell you from my experience, it is a complete joke. I was made to feel like a stranger off the street while my dear wife had to suffer without me. I am severely upset by this, as is my wife. There is absolutely nothing husband-friendly about this pathetic hospital!

Eventually after stitching was completed on my wife, I was able to accompany her to the ward. But the problems didn't stop there.

Later on Wednesday I brought along my parents and 3-year-old daughter to visit my wife and our newborn during the scheduled visiting hours. I soon learned that there is a supposed rule that children under 12 years of age are not allowed into the wards during visiting hours. I find this absolutely terrible and fail to understand the reason behind this ridiculous rule! I'm sad to say that Malaysia is decades behind the rest of the civilized world. A female Indian security guard kept pestering us, speaking to us In Bahasa Melayu, which of course, neither me, nor my parents can speak. She was determined to pull my 3-year-old daughter away from this special moment to visit her new baby sister. She had also been missing her mother a lot and was so excited to see her. We asked the guard why my 3-year-old can't be here to visit on numerous occasions but we were never given an explanation. So we completely refused and just ignored her. Eventually she left us in peace and later even had the cheek to tell us that the 'sister' (head nurse) was angry! I will tell you that I was more angry than any 'sister' at that time! But no-one came to tell my daughter to leave, so I'm wondering if such a foolish rule really exists?

The next day during my visit my wife informed me that the nurse who is supposed to be checking her blood pressure and other things, wasn't doing her job properly at all. She simply opened the book and wrote down an imaginary blood pressure and pulse without even checking! I was so shocked at the complete and utter unprofessionalism and negligence in this hospital! My wife was suffering from hypertension and a nurse is basically jeopardizing my wife's health by guessing her blood pressure! How can this be? I approached some senior nurses on the ward to complain about this. They called over the nurse in question and she denied my allegations. I pressed her about it and told her she was lying. Then she had nothing to say and quickly went off to check my wife's blood pressure properly.

I have no words left to describe how shocked I am about this nurse's awful negligence of my wife's health on ward Melor 1B The nurse in question was (name withheld). I am disgusted at her lazy attitude to this most important work. A hospital is supposed to protect the health of its patients but in this case it was jeopardizing their health! It's just not good enough and I demand there to be a full and thorough investigation into this serious matter. (Name withheld) also invented mysterious figures when checking my newborn baby too! As I've said, this is completely outrageous! There is absolutely no excuse to not properly check a patient's health.

As to whether my complaint has reached a more senior figure in Ward Melor 1B, I have no idea. That is why I'm bringing this entire case to the Ministry of Health and to the HTAA hospital in Kuantan. I am severely unhappy and dissatisfied with the appalling service we have received, and would like to see some action taken so that no nurses like (name withheld) are allowed to continue putting patients health at such great risk.

Yours Faithfully,

Duncan D. Horne

Am I being too fussy? Do I even have an argument here? I was very upset with the dire effort of service we received, so I lodged this formal complaint. Surely we shouldn't have to tolerate such negligence and rudeness when it comes to our health!

What say ye?

McDonalds Delivery in Kuantan

Last night I wasn't feeling too well so we decided to order McDonalds. However, we got ourselves into a great mess.

We waited a painful 45 minutes as our stomachs growled. We were sure glad to see the McDonalds Delivery man arrive with our food. We paid the money and sat down at the table, licking our lips in anticipation. My wife pulled out a burger wrapped in a yellow packet and placed it in front of me. After closer inspection, I discovered it was a McChicken burger, and not the double cheeseburger I'd ordered. We discovered that there was also a stray prosperity burger on the table, which was not part of our order. The receipt was correct, but the food was not ours! The delivery man had made a quick getaway as we rushed to the balcony to see if he was still there.

We called back and explained to McDonalds what had happened, at around 9:25pm. We were told that they would have our order delivered "as soon as possible", a phrase which I don't trust whatsoever in the country of Malaysia.

With stomachs rumbling harder, we waited for the next 40 minutes, wondering what "as soon as possible" really meant. Our food should be here any minute now. At 10:10pm we received a call from McDonalds. "What's wrong now?!" I lamented as my wife took the call. We were informed that they will ask the driver if he can cook our meal for us. (The store closed at 10pm so it was already after hours). I thought it was already on the way, being delivered "as soon as possible!!!" "What the hell have they been doing since we called about the wrong order?!?!" I despaired, an angry stomach adding bite. The answer is, I have absolutely no idea.

So we waited again. In the meantime we gave the prosperity burger to our neighbour, after McDonalds said we could keep the errant order. We also began eating the french fries and McChicken burger whilst waiting.....and waiting.....and waiting.....

Our food finally arrived at 10:35pm, almost 2 hours after we originally placed our order, at 8:40pm. The delivery man said something to me in Bahasa Melayu, which went in one ear and out the other, and handed over a suspiciously heavy brown paper bag of food. I managed to force out a "thanks" before opening the bag to see what we got this time.

It turned out that the bag contained two double cheeseburgers, a hot and spicy McChicken burger, a prosperity burger, three medium french fries and two pieces of McD fried chicken! Another coke, and a sprite that didn't taste like tonic water, as the first one did, was also handed over to us, along with enough chilli sauce packets to last a year!

In the delivery guy's attempt to cover up his mistake, he gave us so much food that we would never have been able to finish it, neither do I endorse eating so much junk food at one time! However, McDonalds still couldn't get our 6 chicken nuggets to us - which was Lauren's meal - so we gave her the two pieces of fried chicken instead. We passed a couple of burgers and a french fries to our excited neighbours who couldn't believe their luck again!

I appreciate the gesture of extra food, but that's beside the point. Once again, we were on the wrong end of poor customer service, and the 6 chicken nuggets we ordered, mysteriously never turned up. It was too late, and I was too tired, to enquire where they were.

We spent the best part of 2 hours waiting for our food, frustrated at how such a simple task could go so wrong, and unhappy with the service.




I'm on a see-saw of emotions with Malaysia. 




Beautiful place. . . . .




Dreadful service.

The art of complaining

Things eventually came to an amicable end after an absolute palaver that lasted months. My allegiance with Alliance and Leicester bank has finally ended positively after months of unnecessary wrangling with the company.

Some time last year, (I forget exactly when) I withdrew a little too much money from an ATM here and wasn't aware of it for a few days. The fluctuating exchange rates didn't help matters. After a few days my mother in England noticed I was in overdraft by a tiny 54 pence and immediately credited my account with one pound sterling.

However, from here, things deteriorated drastically as I was hit with overdraft charges of five pounds per day in overdraft. Stupidly, Alliance and Leicester didn't take one bit of notice to the fact I had deposited the one pound to cover the slight overdraft. They continued to stamp me with charge after charge until, unbelievingly, I was apparently in over two hundred pounds of debt!

I sent a number of emails to the bank boldly explaining my predicament and flatly refusing to pay a penny for such ridiculous charges. My mum also helped out by composing a couple of solid letters to further reinforce our position in these unfair charges.

The bank not once replied one of my secure messages, instead posting threatening letters to my home in England declaring that if I didn't cough up these exorbitant fees they would take me to court. But we remained firm, knowing that a court would surely laugh at a two hundred pounds plus charge over a measly 54 pence!

We didn't hear from the bank for a while until I finally received word from my mum that Alliance and Leicester had waived all charges! Rather cheekily, they also wanted to know if I would be keeping my account open with them. (I had previously cancelled my account on line so that no further charges could be added). For the record, I surely stand by my original decision. Alliance and Leicester have caused me nothing but trouble since I moved to Malaysia and I'm glad to see the back of them.

My message today is that we are perfectly within our rights as customers, clients and consumers, to complain if we are not satisfied. I remember back when I was a child, my mum made a complaint about something or other concerning a chocolate bar. We received a nice letter of acknowledgement and regret from the company together with some free chocolate. (Mum, please correct me if my memory is fading!)

We have a right to make complaints in order that we as the recipients of certain services may receive the quality that companies guarantee, and also that the company involved may analyse its services and seek for improvement. The last thing a company wants is unhappy customers!

I'm thrilled that my complaints were eventually heeded and common sense won the day after a long journey. Imagine the outrageous fees I would have been required to pay if I hadn't complained and let my voice be heard!

I now settle for the much more hassle-free service of international money transfer through Western Union, which is quick and easy to use, and carries no extra usage fees.

So remember, if you're not satisfied, complain!!!