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.
An update:
After this post was written, the person concerned got his connection the next day! Rah! The power of this blog!
Well, frankly, it can’t discount the fact that he had to undergo such hassles. I wish him all the best with his cable strung from trees and poles, getting him whatever is worth it. Hmmm, I wouldn’t be ventured or brave enough to deal with VSNL ever. Don’t have that kind of guts.
i purchased surf2 whiz connection on 14th may, 2008, under the scheme of 2 months unlimited surfing and download free. but, now im constantly getting calls and smss about my high usage bills. i confirmed again with the dealer, but he says the scheme is available to me. even after complaining to the dealer, i recieve the calls again. after i maild my complaint to their nodal office, instead of solving the matter, they are demading money from me, threatening to cut the connection and even saying that we can get a discount on our bill, which was promisd to be free to us! some executives ask us to submit few percentage of the bill. what is all this non-sense? when executievs say to resolve and get back to us in few minutes, they never turn back! this is not expected from a co. like TATA who has the trust of people. i could have taken an unlimited plan earlier if it was not promised to me that for 2 months i wont get any bill. is that a tactic to sell your product by lieing to customers?
Tata indicom is also a nightmare…
beware of this as well…. pathetic…. really pathetic..
I’m from Bombay. my advise to individuals is not to buy tataindicom broadband.
I took a prepaid for one year (starting 1st jan 2008), and hence I’m stuck with this folly.
The service is attrocious (and I’m being polite here). the support staff do not know an iota of networking, I have to tell these guys where to look for the fault.
their 24 hour solution is nothing but a sham. unless their 24 hour is bases on the sun’s rotation rather than the earths rotation.
they have three sets of “people” to resolve the problem. first is “customer support” then “nodal officer” then “appelate”. ALL of the are only email id’s with AUTO RESPONSE. NO SERVICE
Another thing to BEWARE:
they close the call without resolving the problem. you will only find that out when you call them to ask for the report/status. then they give a new support number.
I have at least 15-20 such numbers over the past 6 months.
I have asked them to return my money and dis-continue my service, they are not willing to do that as well.
I on my part am going to propagate this site to all my friends. And no this is not behind the back of Tata Customer Service. I said I was going to do this, and ….
THEY JUST DO NOT CARE !!!
to the TATA INDICOM BROADBAND is aay “GIVE ME BACK MY MONEY” …..
and since normal practise of Tata is to charge for support. I DEMAND compensation for MENTAL HARASSMENT to the tune of COST * No. of support calls
Procedure: Convertion of BSNL new anant to saral anant
tata indicom is hopeless the company is fraud my broadband is not working since 40 days every time we give complaint the complaints are automatically cleared no action has been taken reportedcomplaint to nodal officer , appellate but no action taken
I totally agree with all of you. TATA Indicom’s service is PATHETIC to say the least. It looks like they don’t have the words like ‘responsibility and punctuality) in their dictionary.
I had bought a TATA Indicom USB modem [Sim card #: A000000A58E1FB (80 B2 80 77)] on Aug. 6, 2008, and was promised activation within 4 days which never happened. Even after 15 days and making repeated calls to the salesperson, I did not get the activation done. So I decided to cancel the service and applied for cancellation (#901214165) at their office in Kormangala, Bangalore. I promptly returned the USB modem and was told that I would be getting the refund of the deposit amount (Rs. 700 only) after 45 days of cancellation, at my postal address. Now, it is 3 months and I still do not know what happened to that money.
An employee of TATA Indicom in Kormangala, Bangalore office, had promised me that he would get it done asap. But when I tried to contact him thro’ SMS or phone calls, he neither replied nor answered my phone calls. I suspect that the money would have disappeared into that employee’s pocket already.
If anyone is considering to avail TATA Indicom’s services (especially telecom), PLEASE reconsider if you value your time and hard-earned money.
I totally agree with you people, i took a broadband connection and somebody did net telephony hacking my username and password and i got a bill of 3000rs.Interesting side for this is that it all happend when i was not getting the broadband connection to some cable cut problem and my complaint was still under process ! I repeatedly complained and my bills are not corrected till now and they told me to report to cyber crime cell and they wont do anything else and i’ve to pay the bill now. THen for what “SPECIAL” purpose these people provide static ip? These people are never interested in tracing from where these illegal calls are made.Even when i changed my password, one fine morning it got reset to the default password. Will such a thing happen without the knowledge of technical guys.THey are interested only for their money. Giving net telephony facilities to such a CORRUPT service providers are harmful to the security of our nation, even it can be easily used for terrorist activities as even the complaints are not thoroughly investigated. PLEASE PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM TATAINDICOM BROADBAND ! WORST SERVICE PROVIDERS
I have a TataIndicom Broadband connection since 17.02.2007. However, I regret to say that the services provided are not commensurate with the “TATA” brand name.
I had registered a complaint (no. 6590412) on 3.8.2008 for the non-functioning of my connection. The matter was not attended
to and another complaint was lodged on 6.8.2008. I was told that there was
a problem on the server. Due to some previous engagemets I was out of town
from 08.08.2008 to 06.09.2008. The matter was not resolved when I checked on 07.09.08 and I lodged another complaint (no. 6972652) on 07.09.2008
which was atteded on 13.09.2008 in my absence. As per my telecon with Mr Mehfooz (Service Engineer) the problem was solved. At 1730 hrs when I reached home & checked the problem was still not solved. The matter was reported to Tata Broadband call center (no. 60607070) who promised that it will be attend ed to within 24 hours. This has not been done. On 15.09.2008 I spoke to Ms. Tripti from the billing department who advised me to renew the account as it had expired on 15.09.2008 and the problem will be attended to only
after the account has been renewed. I had promised to renew the account immediately after the problem has been solved. Ms. Tripti, however, was adamant
and even refused to allow me to discuss the matter with her supervisor.
My inhibitions about renewing the account at this stage after such a negative response from the Tata team is justified. Since an amount in
excess of Rs.4500/- lies in credit in this account I had requested for a refund within 7 working days. My various emails to Tata Broadband have gone unanswered till date.
I am absolutely astonished to see soo many ppl facing the same issue as mine.That too all over india!! What a SHAME ON TATAs!
I have been without internet for 1.5 months now and launched complaints on 30th June,13th,21st,26th,29th july,1st aug and 10th aug…
To my horror everytime i raise the complaint it gets closed stating that the problem has been resolved( by the filed engineer.. Mr.gopinath. (i even remeber the name now!! )while i have never met/spoke to this person. Nobody attended to the complaint but still the status of the complaint is closed and resolved!!
After 1,1/2 months of frustration i dont have an option now but cut the link with these useless bustards! Inaddition to losing my money and time , i went through so much of pain and frustration much like all you guys!!
Man without any doubt… TATA INDICOM SUCKS even more than that of bush’s as_shole!!
I still dont understand ..how on earth will a company close the complaits without verifying it with its customers.????!!!
I stay in Pune. It seems that Tata has problems on area to area basis. The place where my friend stays has excellent connectivity, good speed as committed by the company 24*7 & local engineers are very good too.
Now, in the adjoining area (about 1.5-2km), some problems with connectivity are there especially when electricity is not there. The reason being the backup is low in adjacent area.
Hence, before buying any connection irrespective of the company, make sure you get some details about the same from the users in your area. I did that & based on the local opinion finalised the service provider. Hence, be it Tata, Airtel, BSNL or Airtel, all have problems of their own & advantages too. Buy after getting experience of local users. It will help you a lot.
Happy Surfing!!
1)Why don’t you all go to tata’s official website and in the “contact us” option, their is an email id given “info@tata.com” . send emails addressed to Mr.Ratan Tata and list your complaints regarding Tata Broadband service to him.
2) Also visit http://www.tataindicombroadband.in/contactus.html and lodge your complain their too.
3) Also write to the news channels and newspapers . They can’t ignore hundreds of complaints just like that and once it starts appearing in the media then it becomes negative publicity for the company then they will hopefully take some action to improve their service. you have to get it highlighted through the media and get through to the top management of TATA GROUP.Only then will you be able to see an improvement in their service.
Their corporate email system is useless. In any case, I really doubt whether Tatas are interested in their retail broadband offering because their main revenue stream is from the corporates.