India Broadband

India Broadband

CC : Customer Care
CTO : Cable TV operator (who lays last mile cable to your home from Sify servers and helps(?) you setup the connection)


I am a resident of Hyderabad. After doing a month of research I found Sify was cost effective and good technology. I have been using Sify from 10 months from now. I subscribed to 256 Kbps Unlimited. The max Download speed you get is around 30-32Kbps. That’s decent for browsing sites/listening to songs online. First 2 months I had trouble regarding connectivity. Initially I tolerated. A week down time in a month for first 2 months. Anyways they extended my validity to compensate the downtime. But the catch is that during the extended period you get barely 6-10KBPS download speed. Things have been settled then. For next 4 months every thing worked fine without any glitches. I don’t have to call CC or CTO. It was all going fine. Then slowly I started to experience the problems. Most of the mornings dialer never used to login(This is when I usually check mail from clients before I get to office)., Network cable unplugged, Port hang-up, Switch failures, BB101, BB108, Packet losses etc. Can you believe, For last two months I had downtime of 18 days (Yes days not hrs). They might compensate my days but that can not bring back my lost time. I called to Customer care almost every day during last two months.... They say some will come and rectify it. That CTO guy never used to show up. he used to contact me after 10 days of my complaint. He barely knows any thing about computers. All he knows is entering IP and DNS info in network settings and install the client. Once in a blue moon he will show up and do some patch up work at his site and says its all working... when he comes I know the net is working. The day after that same problem, and it continued. As per what I understood there is switch failure and he is not ready to replace it... he just used to change my port and inform all is going fine. Unfortunately there are not many people using net in my area. May be that is why there are so careless. When ever I call the customer care they used to take down my complaint they say they’ll fwd to technical team. They won’t tell when the problem will be rectified or ever the tech guy contacts me. Even though other players like BSNL / Airtel /Tata exists I don’t want to pay for installation charges and go though the initial cycles again or take one more phone connection for the sake of it (Airtel / BSNL). Finally even though Tata Broadband (VSNL) is costlier I was forced to make it a choice. I signed up for TATA even though I am still left with 15 more days of validity with Sify. All I want is quality service when I needed.
Sify mention it as ’’ALWAYS ON CONNECTION’’ But for me it turned out to be ’’RARELY ON CONNECTION’’. Two days back some Sify employee visited my place and got some piece of hardware replaced at CTOs placed (Of course i am still having problems logging in during mornings). But that was too late. They lost their customer. I may not ever opt for Sify again in my life. I might be the person who called Sify record number of times.

After all this following are my observations

1. CTOs are putting sify’s reputation at stake, Sify should at least give them some basic training. I don’t know if Sify understands that CTOs are the face of their company.

2. Customer service is Dumb. Only one way communication. If there is a problem any decent company gives some estimate of when it will be rectified. When Tata can do it why not sify...

3. I can’t generalize the with my views... But this what is happened to me.

4. May be in Sify they never count response time


Suggestions:

1. Don’t call CTOs when you have trouble... else he will come back after 10 days and he may or may not rectify... Even if he rectifies you won’t even get compensated 10 days extension. Always log complaints to Sify CC. Even though it is frustrating.

2. 99.99% there will not any problem with your PC... If something goes wrong don’t fiddle with your PC. Its always at CTO place. rarely at Sify servers. (I fiddled with my NIC card and screwed it up my self)

3. If you use it for important purpose like replying to office mails, Always have alternative ready(Like dial up or something). You never know when it goes and comes.

4. When ever you have downtime/problem call CC and inform them. Or else they will not compensate. They will compensate only from the moment you register you complain and that too only when you ask for it. They don’t have any automated mechanism.

5. May be one should not as patient as me. May be you should shout at the first place itself. May be you should let the hear Loud and clear.


Conclusion:

I accept no one is perfect every one have their strengths and weaknesses. I never expected 0% down time. I really enjoyed Sify when things were going fine. Speed was decent. More over I don’t have to call Sify or CTO. But after the series of incidents, I felt me being not only frustrated but also harassed. Customer wants quality product and service. Former shows technological ability but if later is neglected it can completely screw your entire company image.

Country needs better customer service in the first place than world class products. At least provide with what you promise. People don’t have time and money to read your disclaimers / license agreements or sue with law suits and spend time around the courts. Just give then what they have paid for with their hard earned money.