Friday, July 15, 2005
In in my semester break right now and taking the full opportunity to be with the family. So I took to a day trip to the ski resort of Mount Buller some 300 km plus from Melbourne. Then our family friend invited us to Warnambool to catch a sight of the humpback whales over there. The journey was also a day trip passing through the magnificent Great Ocean Road passing the 12 Apostles at Port Campbell. I'll talk about my trip in another clean sheet.
One semester has passed form me at the University of Melbourne for the Master of Knowledge Management and today, 7 July 2005 is the day I'll get my exam result. I was both excited and scared... So I logged on to the uni's student information system to check my result. Opps... something was wrong. I was barred from seeing my result. The system stated that I still have an outstanding miscellaneous fee of $892! How can this be? Could it be that the Bank has missed a payment? Impossible. BNM has always been a good paymaster. So I called the student admin to check it out.
I guess good management is hard to find these days and the student admin is where such this is really lacking. I was told that the officer in charge of sponsored student would give me a call later that day. It was 2:15pm then. He didn't call.
Next morning at 11am I called student admin again. Once again, I was denied to speak to the officer in charge and was told to wait for his call later today. He didn't call. I was really upset by now. At 3:45 pm, I called them back. To my disbelief, I was told that the officer in charge is a VERY BUSY MAN. Right, the busiest man on earth. The next instruction was really absurd, I was told not to call the student admin again and I was to wait for the officer to call me. That's it. I've had enough of this utter nonsense. I'm going there myself on Monday.
Monday, was at the student admin office around 9:30 am. I was then given a copy of an invoice stating that the Bank (my sponsor, Bank Negara Malaysia @ Central Bank of Malaysia) has yet to pay my overseas student health cover (OSHC) and a subject fee. This is absurd as I already receive the OHSC. Furthermore, the Bank has always been an excellent paymaster. Something smells bad!
So I called the Bank in KL and explain them on my situation. I also asked them whether they receive any invoice on the outstanding fees recently. They replied no. No additional invoices. In fact they have paid the uni for all of the Bank's sponsored students which all 3 of them are with Melbourne Uni. I asked them to call the student admin to get some clarification on this matter. After signing off with the Bank I went back home for lunch.
5 pm Melbourne time, I called the Bank for any development. Indeed there was. It was a shocking relevation. It seems that the uni has been asking for the wrong thing from the Bank to pay. It was actually the Amenities and Services Fees (ASF) that was unpaid. But the ASF is only $ 389 per full time student, how can it be $ 892. The uni explained that the Bank didn't pay ASF for all its sponsored students, 2 for Master and 1 Phd student. And all that amount was charged to 1 student, ME! Why me alone and whay can't the uni simply segregate the ASF to each individual student and invoiced it to the Bank in that manner? Why invoicing the Bank as OSHC fees and subject fees where it should have been ASF? In any business transaction no one will pay if the invoice was wrongly asking payment for the wrong reason.
The Bank has agreed to pay and asked the Uni to redo its invoice and state the right item it. Oh no, the Uni refuse to accept its mistake and refuse to change the invoice to state the ASF for 3 students. Unbelievable! Totally unbelievable! The Bank agrees to pay eventhough the invoice was wrong. I guess this will not go well with the management back home, I'm sure that the Bank would be extra carefull with invoices that they'll be receiving from Melbourne University in the future.
The lessons that I've learned from this incident was that it doesn't make a person or institution lose its value by accepting that they had done a mistake. By accepting that a mistake was done, then t should be taken as lesson learnt. This experience should be used as guidelines or indicator for improvement in the existing systems of doing things.
~Re-flectionz of my mind~
