India Broadband

India Broadband

This review is just an affirmation that Tata Indicom is really pathetic ISP. Already many have mentioned about the poor service that they are getting. I possess one such pre-paid ’bad luck’ connection in Bangalore. It cost me Rs500 for installation and Rs1200 for a three month 1.5 GB (cumulative) download . Here’s some more to add to the misery...

1. The agents who sell the connection just vanish the moment you have made a payment. They have no clue what kind of ’infrastructure’ setup is needed at your premise!!! And they’ll never come to any help if you dont get the right service.
2. The promised duration for setting up the infrastructure is a week, but was later stretched to 10 days and eventually took about a fortnight!
3. The personnel who came for installation just laid the cable and told me that the servers are down so I’ll not be able to get online. But my account start date was set to that same day when they were facing connectivity problem!
4. Connection speeds are OK but one can be disconnected every hour or so. That’s the longest I have had continuous connection. Upon calling I was told to clear my Temporary Internet Folder!!! This beats reasoning.
5. The call-center executives are taught just the basics of troubleshooting. You give more information and they dont even bother to capture that. Most of the time, it took me atleast a couple of calls to get the problem registered with the right cause. To fix it, it can take anywhere between 24 hours or more.
6. The field engineers are a farse. They know just the connections that are to be made but nothing as such about networking or their setup. My router WAN light keeps blinking meaning that there’s a problem. But the engineer (should we call him one?) is happy that there’s something atleast glowing! He then goes out saying he’ll check the wires and then vanishes! Later I get a call telling me that the connection is up from their end. But at my end, I am still reading ’Page not found!’
7. Lastly, I haven’t been getting any connection since past three weeks. Repeated calls have had no effect. So I asked about refund. Here, you must carry the equipment to the local VSNL office and fill up forms to get a refund.
8. In case you persist with the connection then these people wont extend your validity. It seems for that you must have a continuous downtime of eight hours and that you must make a complain about it between 9am to 5pm. Else they will NOT take any action. I have lost more money calling then I’d have spend on surfing just to get this bit of information!
9. On the web module, you get a detailed breakup of usage which is good. But in case you happen to have changed the assigned password, then you might not be able to use your account. This is what I was told by the call-center executive.
10. I am not sure if Tata Indicom will take back the equipment that they have installed at my premise. I have got conflicting answers for this. So I have decided not to give it back until someone responsible and sane comes to collect. Let them suffer till they get their act right.

My sincere suggestion to all (including those who may not even have a Tata connection but are planning one) to please spread the word that they are the worst thing you can get caught up in.