Monthly Archives: August 2010

The woes of AirTel Broadband

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My experiences with the malices of multinational companies continues. After moving to Gurgaon and getting absolutely tired of the services and tantrums of Tata Photon+, I decided to try out my luck at wireline internet. The most prominent provider for ADSL in India is Bharti Televentures under the brand name of AirTel, so I put in an application for signing up with their ADSL2 services.

The first shock came when I had a look at the Tariff Plans. Being someone who lives in the World Wide Web, going for a Data Limited plan was simply out of question. While I was in Bangalore, there was a plan with AirTel that offered 1Mbps connection with no data limits for Rs. 1699 + taxes. Since this ISP has a presence throughout India, I expected them to offer me something similar in Gurgaon as well. There was a surprise for me in store that they have stopped giving out that Tariff Plan. Instead the plans they were offering was the product of a bunch of Marketing Jokers sitting together and assuming that the subscribers of their connection has no idea of what they are talking about.

AirTel has started offering 4Mbps connections in my area with a Fair Usage policy of 25GB. After the 25GB data limit, the speed will be reduced to 256Kbps. A simple math says that, this means that if I download at the maximum possible speed, I would exhaust my limit in less than 14.5 hrs. This seemed utterly ridiculous to me. Why on earth will someone like to take a 4Mbps connection for a whole mont if he is just allowed to use it for 14 hrs at its maximum potential?

This was not the end, the executive who came to ‘install’ the connection at my place said that I would have to buy a modem from them. Not only that, I would also have to buy a telephone set from AirTel if I intend to use the free calls that AirTel is bundling with my connection.

I remember some laptop companies being sued because they were not ready to provide OEM licenses for Operating Systems free with their products. The logic obviously makes a lot of sense. If I have bought a laptop for say word processing, it is impossible for me to use it without an Operating System. So technically, the product which is being sold to me can’t be tested or used in the way it is being sold. So as a customer, my rights are not being honoured. In the similar note, I have not bought a telephone cable from AirTel. I would not be able to use the connection without a working modem.

I think the reason why AirTel is able to do away with all these malpractice is because there is no other ISP in India who is worth their name or price. Also it seems either the Indian Government is incapable of understanding these malpractices or they are just interested in their share of taxes. But one thing is for sure, I will keep my eye open for any alternatives that I find and would dutifully try to spread the awareness of the largest ISP in India.

Shame on you AirTel.

What an IDEA Sirji!!

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Gone are the days when there used to be one or two mobile service providers and the customers are stuck with the woes of monopoly. We have lots of options these days from scores of providers providing kick ass bill plans in both Postpaid and Prepaid forms.

After moving to Gurgaon, I required a local number. Since I would be staying here for a while, I decided to take up a Postpaid local GSM SIM. It always starts with the market survey and the existing provider always gets the advantage. So I contacted AirTel, my existing service provider to move my relocate the connection to Gurgaon. I was pretty upset to find out they could not provide me a comparable plan. But I think thats the story for another day.

While AirTel was taking an excessive amount of time to relocate the connection, I decided to try out other options. I was strictly against Vodafone, Reliance and Tata Indicom. So the other options left were Aircel and IDEA. Filled up a form for a new connection on their website and got a call the very next day from one of the Agencies offering an IDEA connection. I was pretty impressed by the turn around time since the ‘IDEA guy’, Sachin Goel (Mobile Number: +919990925333), was in my office with his brilliant ideas that very morning within 2 hours of making the call. He committed to get the connection provisioned before evening and offered me a plethora of choices of numbers. He asked for Rs. 250 as security deposit to which I refused and asked him to charge me in the first bill.

Now the actual story starts. As per his commitment, the SIM was supposed to be provisioned before 2100 hrs. I was unable to understand how he could possibly get the connection activated without a verification done on the billing address. At 2130 hrs, I gave him a call asking about the status of the provisioning as on dialing the number offered to me, the response was ‘Invalid Number’. His response was, he was unable to deposit the form as it was raining. Nevertheless, he said he is going to get it done the next day, a Friday.

The next day his phone was unreachable the whole day. When I was finally able to call him at about 1930 hours, his response was he was unable to do it because he was too busy picking up other connections. When I told him that this was not as per his commitment, his response was “SIM tor ke phek dijiye” (Break the SIM and throw it away) and hung up on my face.

Now, generally the story ends here when the subscriber breaks the SIM and throws away promising himself he will never look IDEA’s way. However for me the worse was yet to come. The following day, Sachin called back and apologized for his behaviour yesterday as he was having some personal problems. I am generally pretty short on patience, but still I decided to give him a chance. He again promised to get the number provisioned by the end of the day, Saturday. While I didn’t expect anything to change drastically, the number given to me remained invalid.

The final blow happened today. In the morning I got a call from someone who claimed to be calling from IDEA. He was doing a verification call for my connection. I finally started believing that my number would finally be provisioned. However in the afternoon Sachin called me and said that he will not be able to give me the number which he initially committed because it has already been given to someone else. Strangely, the dialling the number still says that the number does not exist which clearly indicates that the number is still available. Now I finally broke the SIM and threw it away.

Lessons learnt:

  • Stay as far away from IDEA as possible. They are going to screw up big time.
  • Never pay for installation charges in cash. If some providers insist on installation charges, (sometimes they even promise to refund the amount in the first bill, ask them to charge it to the first bill. You have your amount insured
  • If the above is not possible, at least try to pay by a cheque. You can stop payment it anytime

What a third grade bogus IDEA SirJI

Update 1: I posted the link to this blog on the FaceBook page as well as Twitter page of IDEA Cellular. Neither they responded back, nor they bothered to delete the post. Looks like they just don’t bother about their  image with the customers. I would definitely not like to subscribe with such a company.

Update 2: This one is just for fun. I even posted to the Twitter page of Abhishek Bachchan. Even he didn’t bother to respond. Not that I expected a response, but this definitely implies that he is only interested in the money he earns from being the brand ambassador for a company and least bothered about his own image.