India Broadband

India Broadband

I wish this could be a review of the quality of Hathway’s service. Unfortunately, I will never be able to comment on that, since I never got a Hathway connection. So why am I writing a negative review? Let me explain...

Since my livelihood depends on the Internet, I decided to get a permanent connection for myself. I immediately ruled out Dishnet DSL because I’ve yet to come across a


person who likes them.

After reviewing the various players here in Bangalore (and seeing how much they rip you off), I shortlisted Atria Convergence Technologies (whose amateur website is at www.cablelite.com ) and Hathway. Out of the two, Hathway was slightly more expensive, but I could apparently get a 128Kbps connection for about Rs. 1500 per month. Atria couldn’t even promise me 90% uptime. 10% downtime in a month is 3 days of outage , something I can’t afford.

So like a regular customer, I call the number listed on the Hathway web page. I get a human, and tell her that I wish to speak to a sales person because I want to get myself a cable net connection. She asks for my contact details and tells me a sales person will contact me within 48 hours. Oh, and I also get a ’’reference number’’. So I wait, and wait, and wait...

A week has passed, and no sales person has called me. So I once again call the nice lady. She apologises profusely, and says that she’ll make sure that someone calls me by the next day. Surprise! Nobody calls. I am furious. I call once again, and the lady seems surprised that nobody’s called, and says she’ll look into it.

That was 2 months ago. Till date, I have not been able to even speak to a sales person to get a connection. I send a query through their web site; nothing. I send them a feedback message saying:

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Hello, Hathway people.

I just emailed you to let you know that you’ve lost a customer today because of your poor sales staff.

I was seriously considering a Hathway Cable Internet connection but the tragedy is that I couldn’t even get to speak to a sales person about it. I called two weeks ago, given a reference code (EC251005) and told that a sales person would contact me within 48 hours. They never did. I called twice after and was once again reassured that somebody would definitely call. Still, nobody did.

Needless to say, I don’t want to do business with a company that can’t be bothered to even call its customers. I’ll be getting my connection from CableLite even though they are more expensive because they had the courtesy to speak to me and answer all my questions. If you won’t call a customer who pretty much begs to give you business, I dread to think of how you’ll treat regular customers.
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All I got was a form letter thanking me for my response and that it was ’’important’’ to them.

That’s Hathway for you. I asked around and a couple of my friends had the same experience. One told me that the Hathway office was directly above hers and she still had to shout at them several times before she got her connection.

Here in Bangalore, if you want to give business to Hathway, good luck.