Travails of a telecom consumer (yours truly) Excellent roads, traffic free and wonderful climate. You find the pulsars, bullets and Harley Davidsons of the world vrooming past and you are driving a 50cc moped. How does it feel? Frustrating? Shy? When India was embracing GPRS, it was unheard for them When there was roaming, we had to switch networks for coverage When the world used MMS, we were wondering if we were children of a lesser God When others were introducing value added services, we were searching for basic value for money paid They assigned an exclusive relationship manager who neither called me or answered me. Effect of employee attrition ensured there were 6 Relationship managers in two years. They were prompt in ensuring a relationship through 6 SMS announcements about the change.And then they stopped it. Budget constraint, must be! Option to change the number? Fear of losing touch with old contacts confined me to continuation. Its a number retained for over a decade after all. So I persisted and surfed the net. Realized there is something called number portability. Was waiting for India to announce it. One telecom minister was about to introduce it and then he was dropped from the cabinet. My wait continued. The new minister came and introduced it a good two years later. Wait ended! or so I presumed I apply for portability. They reject I reapply. They reject I apply yet again. They show remarkable consistency I ask the reason. They say I have to pay my bills/dues. I point out that there has not been a single default payment in the last 9.5 years. It doesnt work I am irritated. They are happy I dont give up, I pay double the bill amount in advance and apply. They reject citing the same reason. I am admiring their consistency by now. I am asked to visit their customer care office. The call center says system doesnt work and asks me to contact their local office. I visit the office. The office says everything is fine and in future, I must register at the call center. So its a circle that never ends you see? Merry go round the mulberry bush, mulberry bush.. Kindergarten rhyme kept ringing in my ears I wanted international roaming. They gave it and cut my conference call facility. I wanted my conference call facility back and they cut my ISD calling facility. I wanted ISD and they sent a customer complaint reference number by SMS when I had lodged none. I have heard of buy one take one offers. This was buy one and cut one The IVR and response quality at the call center reminded me of one of Viveks famous comedies of take diversion and landing in Tirupathi instead of Nungambakkam in Chennai. Meanwhile, technology takes strides. I move to an iPhone and it cried for a better network. This was getting too much to handle. I hoped for a take over, merger, a company buyout. Nothing worked including the network When? When? When? When did this all start? March 2002. A 12.5 year marriage that began very well with the original company (before its take over in 2004) comes to a happy ending. A much needed divorce for a long time. Happy to have migrated to a new network with a lot of hope. I gave this network what i didnt give to my employers. Yeah! I changed jobs and am with my 5th employer over the last 12 years. You have heard of brand loyalty, I call this brand tolerance :) This time, even MS Dhoni and Surya could not stop me from leaving them. Now, you know the company I am talking about :)
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 06:25:30 +0000