India Broadband

India Broadband

Here are some facts about SIFY, at least in Mumbai.

1) They do not control the last mile of their connection - they work with local cable operators who already have been cleared by building societies to install cables, etc.

2) The cable operators that SIFY works with are utterly and totally irresponsible and incompetent

3) Try as they might, as friendly as they may want to be, Sify personal (engineers and call center staff) at the end of the day do not control a large part of the technical relationship with their customers.

I have had Sify (and a number of other broadband providers for home/office) for about 1 year. Out of that year I have had 4 full months of downtime, and received 2 weeks of compensation for it only after untold calls, arguments, visits with engineers, long distance calls and hours and hours of wasted time.

I am disgusted with SIFY. After the most recent, ongoing, 1.5 months of no service and making two daily calls to them, I requested that they refund the money I paid for installing their equipment, as they were not delivering the promised service but were charging my account every day. If one goes to a restaurant and is handed a bill without having been served the meal one ordered it would be considered criminal - but in the case of SIFY it seems to be their business model.

The only thing that they have going for them is that when the connection is up and running, it is of decent quality. Their ’’unlimited’’ package actually has daily MB limits, and they are more expensive and slower then Reliance Broadband.

If Reliance has reached your area, I can reccomend them highly - fast, unlimited connection, and a good price.

Hathway I would not touch again with a barge pole.

SIFY should be embarassed, here are some more facts for you:

- They hold their customers hostage once they get their installation payment - it is impossible, no matter what the circumstances, to get any money back from them. Once you pay for the installation and the equipment on your roof it doesnt matter if it never works - you will not get paise back.

- Some of their support staff in Chennai actually lie, refuse to let you speak with managers, and essentially harass customers with clueless calls, and general incompetence (that being said some of them are very kind and do try their best - but they are not in control of the system)

- They have no company memory - engineers are sent on client visits without the slightest idea of the history of the problem, and they keep quiting to go work for other providers.

- They will change their excuses continuously: one day it is that the box on the roof needs replacement, the next it is that the rains have done some damage, two weeks later there is no technical problem and they will send someone over, two weeks after that they say they want more money from you and the cause of 2 months of downtime is nonpayment, etc. etc. Good luck.

- Their engineers will come over and liberally make STD calls to Chennai on your phone, they will also literally ask you to yell at their boss to get the work done.

- I had a SIFY field engineer tell me (correctly) that once the head of SIFY in the south of mumbai had received my money I would not hear from him, or be able to reach him again, and another one tell me that he turns his phone off to avoid being hassled by his bosses.

- The SIFY field engineers are all very friendly and try their level best, but they are treated very poorly by SIFY - not given information before visits, not supported, forced to take the brunt of customer anger knowing that their company does not havet he ability to deliver what it promises due to the cable operators.

- I consider the effort required to SIFY to provide the service for which they have been paid to be criminal, and their incompetence amounts to harassment - how many times must one explain what the problem is, how many times must one lodge new complaints as they conveniently erased the old ones despite them remaining unsolved?

- I am sure a large number of their customers would love to report them to the police for the theft of time and money. Dont believe a word of their recent ads claiming reliability - the only thing you can rely on is that they will make your money disappear.