After being a very satisfied customer with Idea Cellular for last few years, recently I have started getting highly frustrated and annoyed at the ways of Idea. Especially with their approach of going out of their way to trouble the most loyal of their customers.
Their advertising campaigns are totally un-cool and give away their sense of urgency in getting new business. Their so-called social-initiatives all look like a fraud to me. The facilities they provide look like a mask to fool the public, the complaint-registration dialogue on their website, which just doesnt allow you to register your complaint by throwing error while submitting - a case in point. And then their unstoppable tele-marketing calls! When I tried to register for Do-Not-Disturb on their website, like other services, it didnt just work. As I said, it's there just to fool the public. Then I called up their customer-service to register for DND, and to my astonishment, I was charged 50p/min for that call. 50 paise are no big deal, but business-ethics is what I am trying to get at. And then again, when I told the guy to add me to the Do-Not-Disturb registry, he told me it would take 45 days!!!! Can it get anymore scandalous than that? Take this - the frequency of tele-marketing calls increased after that.
And with this bit of history, now, to my disbelief, they have barred my GPRS service for all the wrong reasons. Rather than mincing words in telling what happened, I think I would rather share the actual mail I wrote to all their email addresses I could find and find relevant. A first for me to publically share my email, but I think in these cases of customer-apathy, it makes a big sense to make it all public. Jago grahak jago.
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"Hi
I have been using Idea postpaid connection since last 4-5 years i.e. since I bought my first mobile. I have never been late on bill payment for one single bill till date.
Recently my frustration with Idea has been growing by leaps and bounds.
My GPRS is not working since yesterday, and if I understand it correctly, it's barred. Why? Because my 'usage' has gone beyond my credit-limit. I got hundred calls for paying my bill in advance as the credit limit was exhausted.
I activated GPRS service couple of years ago. I pay Rs.200 for an allocated usage-quota of 500MB per month. The strange thing is I am charged for GPRS usage throughout the month, and then at the end the bill is generated with a GPRS charge of Rs. 200. When I activated GPRS I was charged Rs.200 in advance, before I even started using it. So that means it's advance-billing as far as GPRS goes. So effectively, whenever I use GPRS, I have already paid for the usage. SO I fail to see what kind of sense it makes to again charge me for the usage throughout the month!! Another really annoying side-effect of this non-sense is I cannot know my true usage during any time of the month, as the figure is swollen up with false GPRS charges. At the time of GPRS activation itself, I had raised this concern, loud and clear and I was shamelessly told - this is how the system is. What kind of company are you if you cant have a logical system in place for that single most important aspect of any business - billing!? and cant make amends when you know the system is doind wrong? *You* own the system right? Who do you think you are kidding?
Now I have explained this numerous times to all the 'customer-care'(!) people calling me up for bill payment in advance. Everybody assures me that I wont be troubled again. But then in next few hours there is this yet-another-customer-care-guy asking me when I will pay up. And the next day I receive an SMS saying my services are barred.
All this headache and trouble without even a single fault from my side. Effectively, I am being denied a service even after paying in full for it, which makes a good case if I approach a consumer court.
Is this a punishment for being a long term customer with Idea? Dont you guys have even enough business-sense to provide at least normal service to such long-term post-paid cash-cows?
I would better see some quick action in this regard. I want my GPRS activated and working ASAP and I want the system corrected such as to take into account my pre-payment for GPRS. When I do a *147# I want to see my real usage; not some figure blown up by charges for a service that has already been paid for. I am a software engineer myself and have seen enough complex systems to know this is easily doable; so spare me that sir-the-system-is-that-way BS.
Believe me, if I dont see anything convicing done in this regard, I will take it as total apathy, and will not hesitate to jump the ship and switch to some other service provider. And I wont even wait for number-portability.
Shreyas Kulkarni
Sr Software Engineer,
XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXX, Pune
Cell: +NN N NN NN NN NNN"
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[UPDATE: 4 Mar 2010, 11pm]
By 2pm I realised not only my GPRS, but now my outgoing calls were also barred. Lost my temper. Blasted that poor customer-care guy. Outgoing calls were resumed in an hour. GPRS was still barred.
Got a call from a girl from Sangli office. This call was in response to the mail. The mail had reached Sangli office. This time gave her a gyan session on all this in Marathi, and got the same reply - sir-i-agree-u-shouldnt-be-charged-but-this-is-as-per-the-system. BS! You know it's wrong and rather than correcting it you expect the customer to pay interim bill amount in thousands of rupees to increase his credit limit??
I told her to discontinue my GPRS from the next billing cycle. Now I am on the lookout for a service provider with 1p/s plan with good GPRS. Tata DOCOMO, BSNL, Vodaphone and maybe Virgin are what I am targetting. I am done with Idea Cellular now.
By the way, the girl said she would reply to my mail, but I am still awaiting that official reply.
Their advertising campaigns are totally un-cool and give away their sense of urgency in getting new business. Their so-called social-initiatives all look like a fraud to me. The facilities they provide look like a mask to fool the public, the complaint-registration dialogue on their website, which just doesnt allow you to register your complaint by throwing error while submitting - a case in point. And then their unstoppable tele-marketing calls! When I tried to register for Do-Not-Disturb on their website, like other services, it didnt just work. As I said, it's there just to fool the public. Then I called up their customer-service to register for DND, and to my astonishment, I was charged 50p/min for that call. 50 paise are no big deal, but business-ethics is what I am trying to get at. And then again, when I told the guy to add me to the Do-Not-Disturb registry, he told me it would take 45 days!!!! Can it get anymore scandalous than that? Take this - the frequency of tele-marketing calls increased after that.
And with this bit of history, now, to my disbelief, they have barred my GPRS service for all the wrong reasons. Rather than mincing words in telling what happened, I think I would rather share the actual mail I wrote to all their email addresses I could find and find relevant. A first for me to publically share my email, but I think in these cases of customer-apathy, it makes a big sense to make it all public. Jago grahak jago.
===========================================================================================
"Hi
I have been using Idea postpaid connection since last 4-5 years i.e. since I bought my first mobile. I have never been late on bill payment for one single bill till date.
Recently my frustration with Idea has been growing by leaps and bounds.
My GPRS is not working since yesterday, and if I understand it correctly, it's barred. Why? Because my 'usage' has gone beyond my credit-limit. I got hundred calls for paying my bill in advance as the credit limit was exhausted.
I activated GPRS service couple of years ago. I pay Rs.200 for an allocated usage-quota of 500MB per month. The strange thing is I am charged for GPRS usage throughout the month, and then at the end the bill is generated with a GPRS charge of Rs. 200. When I activated GPRS I was charged Rs.200 in advance, before I even started using it. So that means it's advance-billing as far as GPRS goes. So effectively, whenever I use GPRS, I have already paid for the usage. SO I fail to see what kind of sense it makes to again charge me for the usage throughout the month!! Another really annoying side-effect of this non-sense is I cannot know my true usage during any time of the month, as the figure is swollen up with false GPRS charges. At the time of GPRS activation itself, I had raised this concern, loud and clear and I was shamelessly told - this is how the system is. What kind of company are you if you cant have a logical system in place for that single most important aspect of any business - billing!? and cant make amends when you know the system is doind wrong? *You* own the system right? Who do you think you are kidding?
Now I have explained this numerous times to all the 'customer-care'(!) people calling me up for bill payment in advance. Everybody assures me that I wont be troubled again. But then in next few hours there is this yet-another-customer-care-guy asking me when I will pay up. And the next day I receive an SMS saying my services are barred.
All this headache and trouble without even a single fault from my side. Effectively, I am being denied a service even after paying in full for it, which makes a good case if I approach a consumer court.
Is this a punishment for being a long term customer with Idea? Dont you guys have even enough business-sense to provide at least normal service to such long-term post-paid cash-cows?
I would better see some quick action in this regard. I want my GPRS activated and working ASAP and I want the system corrected such as to take into account my pre-payment for GPRS. When I do a *147# I want to see my real usage; not some figure blown up by charges for a service that has already been paid for. I am a software engineer myself and have seen enough complex systems to know this is easily doable; so spare me that sir-the-system-is-that-way BS.
Believe me, if I dont see anything convicing done in this regard, I will take it as total apathy, and will not hesitate to jump the ship and switch to some other service provider. And I wont even wait for number-portability.
Shreyas Kulkarni
Sr Software Engineer,
XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXX, Pune
Cell: +NN N NN NN NN NNN"
===========================================================================================
[UPDATE: 4 Mar 2010, 11pm]
By 2pm I realised not only my GPRS, but now my outgoing calls were also barred. Lost my temper. Blasted that poor customer-care guy. Outgoing calls were resumed in an hour. GPRS was still barred.
Got a call from a girl from Sangli office. This call was in response to the mail. The mail had reached Sangli office. This time gave her a gyan session on all this in Marathi, and got the same reply - sir-i-agree-u-shouldnt-be-charged-but-this-is-as-per-the-system. BS! You know it's wrong and rather than correcting it you expect the customer to pay interim bill amount in thousands of rupees to increase his credit limit??
I told her to discontinue my GPRS from the next billing cycle. Now I am on the lookout for a service provider with 1p/s plan with good GPRS. Tata DOCOMO, BSNL, Vodaphone and maybe Virgin are what I am targetting. I am done with Idea Cellular now.
By the way, the girl said she would reply to my mail, but I am still awaiting that official reply.
2 comments:
so idea made u blog instead of mere tweet...:-)
would hv liked to see the reply-mail from customer-care as well...;-)
but yes...difficult to digest that DND takes 45 days...
how come billing doesn't?
;-))
but nyways I am no more getting calls / msges after that...
still awaiting the official reply. the sangli-girl did say she will reply.
if i get one, will post it here for sure. to hell with the confidentiality.
i doubt if there will be a reply, though. if at all i get one, i believe it will be more of a plain straight-faced we-regret-the-inconvenience-but-please-pay-it's-the-system kind of bullshit. mere business words, no substance.
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