BSNL - Cell One - Tamil Nadu. Review on BSNL CellOne / Excel Mobile Operator

As most of us have tried the juggling act of shifting operators to get the most of our money, I believe a sizeable population of you who read the survey to have come across the cellular offering from BSNL - Cellone Excel.

Expectation

While evaluating service providers, I raked BSNL as an everyday low price stable operator, unlike other trendy players who lure you with limited period M2M free or free messaging. Also as I am against changing numbers frequently, I opted for Cell One. Also, the decision was influenced by the fact that it was the only service provider to offer free roaming in Chennai circle.

*Expectation meets Reality

Having used Cell One for the last 7 odd months, I have started realising that the name is actually a very cruel joke on its users - Yeah, Cell One does only one thing .....It always displays '' Network Busy'' when you try a number. Please note that I am a subscriber of Cell One, Tamil Nadu circle. The only oter thing displayed being '' message sending failed''

When you reach the customer care after trying the # for not less than 20 minutes, you are greeted with a perfunctory 'vanakkam' (good day) by a tired cust care exec who has been subject to hearing a lot of angry customers' complaints all his / her shift. I might add that I am very considerate while talking to these cust support execs, for I know that their roles & responsibilities are very limited. And most telcos use them only as a layer of insulation to their branch officials.

There were 2 instances in which the cust exec was audacious enough to ask me to call another technical complaints cell # and I blew my cool because getting even a cust support # comes after an ordeal of 20 minutes! Now-a-days, when one calls the cust support, they offer an apology even before you air your concern ...they have started toeing the standard line...'' Sorry sir, we have a network problem in the Coimbatore circle''

Last week, there was an article in the Business Line which claimed BSNL to be the operator with the least disputes in billing. I truly agree - a service provider can have billing problems only if it connects calls!! And the same report went on to say that BSNL Cell One was one of the lousiest in terms of customer complaint resolution (measured in days as against day / hours in terms of other operators)

All this brouhaha about urging PSUs to learn from BSNL gives me the scares to deal with some PSU , if they have BSNL as a role model.

The list goes on....Loss of face when you are unable to reply to a message immediately (of course , you can't call as the damn network is always busy), loss of time!!!, accelerated depriciation of your priced hand set as you end up abusing it for a longer time as almost never has it been that a call was connected in the first instance..How I wish I were a lawyer! I would take them to the courts without having to go away from my normal life.

Please don't toy with the idea of getting a BSNL Cell One connection in Tamil Nadu Circle , esp Coimbatore..The liars have been promising to resolve my complaint within the day for the last seven months (thats 210 days).

Thanks to MS for offering a platform to air my opinions.