Feb 11, 2005 06:17 PM
13623 Views
(Updated Feb 11, 2005 06:22 PM)
I am from Chennai and this is regarding DISHNET. I had experiences with it before and after it was taken over by Tata Indicom or whatever.
pre-Tata Indicom :
During those days I was in the US of A and was pestering my parents to go for one of the DSL connections since it would be faster and my bro was going for his GRE exams. Well I was not involved in their decision making and they ultimately chose DISHNET.
It was a pretty expensive proposition as they had to shell out an year's usage in advance + deposits + instrument charges etc., something to the tune of I guess 20K, I dont remember exactly however. I was not so much into details of the options they took up etc. . Well to cut the long story short I came back to India about 3 months after we set up the DISHNET and experienced it firsthand. It was great , way faster than the dial up, pretty neat. There used to be some problems with the login and internet sometimes but used to be corrected with a call to the customer center.
Not Good but not Bad either.
Suddenly they dropped a bomb, they said all my deposit has been exhausted in about 5 months, (the deposit was paid for about an year's usage !!!!!), and that we had to pay more to renew. It was at that time that we were planning to shift to another house. Well, we kinda blamed ourselves for excessive usage and then asked them that we would pay if they could transfer our internet connection from the previous house to the new house, which was just about 100 metres away. They told us that for this they will charge 5000 bucks. It made me livid and after a long battle wherien we told them that this was unfair , we decided to terminate the connection.
Post Tata Indicom:
Thereafter I learnt that the dishnet dsl thing has been taken over by the tata indicom ( I always have a great deal of respect for the tatas and their ethics, since I had worked in TELCO and know their methods, my respect for them will not diminish even after this experience). With Tatas at the helm I decided to give Dishnet another chance.
This time I took charge and personally talked to the service engineers or the installation engineers and refused to pay on a long term basis or any lump sum deposits. I took up a Rs. 850/- plan on the MB browsed basis(as against time basis),with a monthly quota of 500MB(good enough), as it seemed cheap and best. We paid up some installation money somewhere around 2K or so.
The real fun started when the guys came up to install and I am an internet professional and they did not know that. As usual they installed the whole thing on my p/c and I asked for a demo. They connected the set up and opened the browser , browsed a couple of sites including the dishnet home page, showed me the billing information and started to leave.
Not so fast. I just opened their console and saw something fishy. It is like this . Even though you are connected to the internet but not browsing at all, still my MB usage was rising like hell. Something like if you are just connected to the internet , without browsing,downloading or any activity, u will still exhaust ur monthly quota of 500MB within 2-3 hours !!!!! Yes it was that bad.
After catching these guys red handed I shouted at them and they started giving excuses about virus corruption in my drive. I told I had just formatted the p/c a day back and so there was no chance of that happening. I opened the Task Manager and showed them what was consuming so much of internet usage. It turned out to be one of the software components they had introduced during the installation. I rounded up their area manager and the service manager in one go that evening and asked them to explain. They changed tack and said some virus would have introduced during their install which is causing the problem etc.... and were stammering asking me to install Service Pack 2 for Win 2000 etc... All lies and crappolas.
It then dawned on me. The Dishnet guys themselves install these softwares,which increases ur consumption dramatically, to charge exorbitant rates. This explains why during the first time, my one years payment got exhausted in just 4 months flat!!! My first month bill came to around 3200 /- wherien my plan was just 850/- , I called them and fired them and within a minute the guy asked me to pay 1600/- , I raised my voice again and it came down to Rs.850/- . That did it. I have suspended the internet connectivity.
Since disconnecting the whole thing I forfied Rs. 1000/- , I thought I would rather suspend it and keep it and let them run behind me.
Trust me guys , you are better off with a dial up!!!!
-The King
