Jan 21, 2012 08:19 PM
13896 Views
I'm from Bangalore and had been using BSNL prepaid mobile from the year 2003. For last few years, there was lot of signal problem in the old Airport area that I reside. I never use to get good signal inside home. In spite of this problem, I was with this BSNL just because I never wanted to loose my number and I was under wrong assumption that BSNL is best.
Tolerated lot of embarrassment talking loudly, repeating talks, running outside the home to call or receive and getting loads of spam SMS everyday. There were so many SMS, that I have stopped looking at inbox and was missing messages meant to me only from friends and family.
Adding to all the woes, there comes big pain with SMS messages from number 546461005 with message like below:
Thanks for renewal to Re 1 Store at dd/mm/yy. You have been charged Rs. 5 to unsubscribe Send UNSUBONE to 54646.
The message is very cleverly formed. Please note there is no full stop after "You have been charged Rs. 5" though they have used past tense. But, in ignorance, I always read and mistook it like, to unsubscribe it is 5 Rs. and never bothered to unsubscribe from it. As I make lots of calls and never use to check my balance frequently, I was completely unaware of losing 5 Rs for each message. I think they have taken my ignorance for granted after few months and from December 2011, I started getting at least 2 messages per week.
December month, I have not made many calls and noticed siphoning of my balance. But still, I could not make out it is because of this message. From last week of December to second week of January, I started checking my balance and noticed the difference and I had 8 messages in this period. I was sure that something messed up.
For first time in 8 years, I contacted BSNL support with so difficulty using number 9448024365 and got to know that this is "Service Message" and every message costs 5 Rs. I wonder, who in the world would opt for these kind of messages and support person accused that I have opted for it but he had no proff when and how I have done it. When I asked him to cancel that, he denied and shared another support number 1909 to do so. I called this number and de registered myself with machine instruction call and waited for a day to again get same message and 5 Rs loss. Then I called 1909 again and this time I spoke to support person and requested her to unsubscribe. To my shock, she asked me to call after half an hour, and the reason she formed is "server down". That day I called more than 20 times to 1909 and spoke to all support people to complain and finally I got a complaint number with the answer that to deactivate it needs one month.
The next day, I again got that message and just to give a try, as I was having no trust to those customer support clarifications, I sent a unsubscribe message "UNSUBONE" to 54646 as mentioned. Immediately, I got reply that it is done and no more messages I got from that day. But the price paid for that message is 30 Rs. The reason being, within few minutes, I got another message from BT-BTUNES saying that I have activated for BSNL Tunes. Who wouldn't get angry and frustrated with this . Again, I called support to deactivate it and this time promptly done but with no refund though I never opted or even used it.
I could not believe myself BSNL being a government organization, loots people like this. As, most of the rural folks uses BSNL and I can imagine how this kind of fraud robs ignorant customers. Still BSNL incur huge revenue loss every year! I wanted to register a case against this with consumer forum but unfortunately, I did not have complete proof and was sure of not getting justice.
Within 10 days, I have moved to Airtel post paid plan, thanks to mobile portability. Learnt lesson to be aware of such fraud SMS and closely monitor balance or charges frequently. Late better than never!
