India Broadband Forum

India Broadband Internet

Well, we get to hear about horror stories; ISP’s routinely trying to palm of customers for slow speeds or capping on the usage. This one is in the league of it’s own. And it pains even more when it comes from the house of Tata’s.

Well, to cut a long story short, this person works with a respectable computer company. He wanted to have a connection of his own to work. Since he lives in a place where there is no other service provider, he chose to trust his money in Tata’s brand name. However, despite repeated calls and efforts, he couldn’t trace the “executive” for his connection.

Here is the scanned receipt for the same on Flickr. I have obscured the name of the person for privacy reasons.

In his words and I recount it here. Emphasis is mine.

I know that I can claim for compensation. But you know the situation in our country. Even if I do file a claim it’ll only keep on dragging until God knows when. And that’ll be more frustrating than this. I am doing my very best to disuade people from opting for Tata. In fact,there were a few people asking me about this issue after they saw my post on your BB blog. And its only that I need net at my place urgently and there are no other providers that I am going for them.

So, service providers take advantage of monopoly. Well, is there any way to rap their knucles or flog them?

In another mail, this harassed customer related his tale as such:

After getting another assurance from their Territory Sales Manager, I waited for three days. But as in the past it turned out that these people are fast with assurances than their work. I called this guy up on Sunday morning and I was told that I’ll get a call from him in 5 mts with an update. After two hours of waiting I decided to call this fellow up and but to no avail. It seems that they have a policy of not responding to the customers calls, if they don’t have anything to say.

After being fed up with all this, I went to the cable operator who’s supposed to do the installation and told him that these people are putting all the blame on you. Hearing this, he also got agitated and requested me to talk to the Tata Indicom fellows in front of him. We tried but even his call wasn’t taken. Finally he told me that whatever these people had been telling me were all lies. He was told about my connection 10 days ago but he wasn’t able to provide me with one because the DSL port through which the connections are provided, were not
sufficient enough to complete the requests of the 5-6 pending connections which he had with him. He told me that these guys had asked him to market for them,inspite of knowing the fact that they might not be able to keep their word or time limit to the customers.

I thank you readers for the time and patience you put in to spend here. I chose to do this post because we need a public platform to highlight the mess behind the hoopla. Why are theseservice providers trying to take us for granted?

In the same vein, I am pissed off from BSNL, but have to stick on to them because I really don’t have a choice.

Don’t miss the sub text. Even though this person can be compensated in the court of law, no one ventures to step in for legal remedies. Consumer courts cases can drag on for months to years even though it is legally mandated that the cases need be disposed off in a particular time frame. In any case, what do these companies have to loose?

A customer? There is enough captive base for them.

ask_stranger

I have copied a mail sent to these guys, thinking that some one will respond. Interestingly no one turned up.
I am posting this mail for couple of reasons,
- let everybody aware of how these bustards deal with customer.
- as many of us are cheated, why can't we sue them together, I think it carries more importance.

Note this is a small snippet, but the agony caused by these guys is endless.

Here it goes……

My account xxxxxxx@eth.net is de-activated saying that some amount is due on my account.

I had filed complaint in the past on "broadband usage". Information I got on this is, Hyderabad team is working with their counterparts in Mumbai, mean while they told me to pay partial amount till the problem is figured out. Well that was the last communication I got and I paid the partial amount in spite of your bad services and un-interrupted problems with the browsing.

Here is the mail I posted on 2nd Mar.07:
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My internet was not working from 26th feb'07 to 2nd Mar'07.

I lanched a complaint on 26th Feb. reference number: 1772317.

Well I see lot of data download/upload on my account.
Broadband Usage
Your Broadband Usage Details are as follows
Broadband Usage
Date
(DD/MM/YYYY) Start Time
(HH:MM:SS) End Time
(HH:MM:SS) Duration
(HH:MM:SS) Uploaded Data
(In MB) Downloaded Data
(In MB) Total Data
(In MB)
28/02/2007 18:09:47 0921 1534 12.222 66.146 78.368
28/02/2007 1703 1747 00:00:44 0.004 0.013 0.017
28/02/2007 1758 1705 00:00:07 0.0 0.0 0.001
28/02/2007 1051 0251 16:00:00 204.525 35.437 239.961
27/02/2007 1851 1316 19:02:25 239.479 115.534 355.013
27/02/2007 0738 1305 0627 2.24 20.355 22.595
27/02/2007 0414 0424 0010 0.0 0.001 0.002
27/02/2007 0058 03:58:37 0339 0.209 3.983 4.192
26/02/2007 20:05:57 0046 0449 1.418 4.61 6.028
26/02/2007 1947 1904 0017 0.102 0.413 0.514
26/02/2007 1826 19:09:04 0038 0.418 1.118 1.535
26/02/2007 15:03:21 1553 0032 0.001 0.003 0.004
26/02/2007 1402 14:59:45 0043 7.831 0.168 7.999
26/02/2007 1335 1416 0041 1.174 26.347 27.521
26/02/2007 13:03:09 1304 0055 0.002 0.008 0.01


Could you guys let me know what the heck is happening here.
I need to scream at you guys to fix the reported problem during all these days and as a bonus you are charging more money.
Get back to me immedietly on: xxxxxxxxx.
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There was an IP allocation problem for my account it persisted till you de-activated my account. Gopi and Mohan are your technical guys who worked on various problems they are well aware of the issues. I think you should talk to them on technical front to understand the problems. Net wasn't working, so how can I download and upload data.
I spoke to a gentleman named sabastian on Saturday 24th Mar.07 around 5:20pm regarding the internet browsing problem. He said account is de-activated; it will be activated only if I pay the dues. He doesn't bother about any of the existing complaints, reluctant to go through the previous history of the problems. Even he suggested not to call the help line, it won't be of any help.
It is wonderful to see, how each individual of tata vsnl empowered to carry out their own decisions and they can say what ever they wish.
Nevertheless here are some of the complaint numbers your help desk executives provided me in past 20 days.
1772317
1861854
1864374
1919548
1893646
1956102
1861860
1910128
1937656 and more.. just go through your tracking system.

I copy all the mail transaction, but they will be of more than 25 pages. If you are interested in them for any evidences, I can send them across.

mrwakle

My experiecne is same , they are really looting the customer , i have very frustating experience , despite of calling customer care 20 times , my connectivity problem is not resolved , finally they have terminated my account without my consent & not even refunding my money .

Tata Broadband is shame on Tata Group of companies.

I am planning to register complaint in Consumer forum , if we register collectively it will help .

We can also contact TV channels to expose the consumer cheating by TataBroadband.

Please mail me on mrwakle@gmail.com with subject "TataBroadband Looting Customers" , we submit this as proof to media or consume court.